Reg No
15401113
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Social, Technical
Original Use
Icehouse
Date
1780 - 1800
Coordinates
234437, 261252
Date Recorded
05/11/2004
Date Updated
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Pair of detached icehouses on polygonal plans, built c.1790, associated with Tristernagh House (now ruinous). Now disused. Icehouse to south has brick barrel-vaulted interior with evidence of rubble stone porch to front, now collapsed. Blocked entrance to south. Rubble stone facing to entrance front with square-headed opening with brick surround. Icehouse to north has domed brick interior with rubble stone porch with segmental-headed doorcase (opening within top half of chamber) on northwest side. Located adjacent to Tristernagh Abbey/House.
Icehouses were common structures associated with large demesnes particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They played an important functional role in the preservation of food in the era before refrigeration. The domed and barrel-vaulted interiors are impressive examples of early engineering and are of technical merit. These icehouse form part of a group of structures associated with Tristernagh Abbey/House, a medieval foundation apparently converted into a dwelling house in the late eighteenth-century but abandoned shortly thereafter.