This year’s slightly more casual and relaxed walk to Daldowie Crematorium yielded a welcome find – the Daldowie Icehouse (or ice house), not seen for some years.
I have to confess that I managed to misplace this feature, having not bothered to wander along to it while at the crematorium for some years, and discovered it was not where I thought it was when I finally did make the effort a few years ago.
After a number of tries, I was even beginning to wonder if it had been lost, and someone had decided to remove it! Given the sort of historic vandalism some people can get away with, I would not have been surprised.
Thankfully, the real problem was my memory, and I had just been heading for the wrong part of Chuckie Hill and always completely missing it. However, this year I decided that if it wasn’t where HAD been looking, then it must be where I hadn’t. Buried in the side of the hill, to avoid direct sunshine, there are no visible clues to its location, and undergrowth also helps hid it, so you have to walk past it, and turn back toward the crematorium to find it.
It has no connection to the crematorium, which it preceded by some years, and was connected to nearby Daldowie House, unfortunately long gone, along with many of the ‘Big Houses’ that were built along the banks of the River Clyde for wealthy owners of the time.
Daldowie was built around 1745 by George Bogle, a Glasgow merchant, but was replaced in the 1930s by Daldowie Cemetery.
While records of the house can be found in historic references online, the icehouse seems to have been missed, making it harder to find once it’s slipped your memory.
It is symmetrically divided into two similar rooms. The only difference seems to be that the floor level of the one on the right is rising, as earth accumulates inside.
Having thick stone walls to help preserve the ice, it seems odd to have windows as well as doors, since these would both serve to reduce the effectiveness of the insulation.
Maybe it was a nice place to go later in the year (cool in summer), once all the ice had been used.
This is the ceiling of the room on the left, and is one of my rare flash pics, necessitated by the need to avoid kneeling on the wet ground to take the upward looking view, and negate the wobbling camera caused by my being off balance and unable to hold it still.
During winter, icehouses would be filled with ice taken from frozen ponds, or any other source, and it could be used for as long as it lasted during the following months.
Secret Scotland 