A Passion for History

Email Nicola

The History behind The Wayward Widow

In Wayward Widow the hero, Martin Davencourt, has a problem. He wants to talk to Lady Juliana Myfleet, but simply cannot pin her down. In the end he accidentally traps them together in the Ice House in Juliana's garden, and finds that the chilly surroundings prove a perfect setting for a passion that simply cannot be frozen out...

Ice­houses predate the refrigerator as a means of storing ice for preserving food. They consist of chambers wholly or partly subterranean and suitably insulated from above. The practice of building ice houses came to England in the 17th century via France following the Restoration, one of the first ones being located in Upper St. James' Park, now known as Green Park, in 1662. By the eighteenth century it became increasingly common for major houses to have their own ice house. A spell of several hard winters towards the end of the century also encouraged their use. The ice was used in cooling drinks and for making cold confections in the kitchens. In the kitchen of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton there is a menu on display for a dinner dated 1817 and of the 22 sweets no less than 7 were made using ice.

 In Wayward Widow the type of ice house that I have used comprises a rectangular chamber that is situated at the same level as or very slightly below the level of the entrance which has a single door. The ice would have been collected from the nearest convenient lake or pond and dropped into the pit of the ice house, possibly layered with straw to make removal easier.

In the cold surroundings, the ice should be capable of being stored for more than a year, and an experiment was carried out at Levens Hall in Cumbria in 1980 when ice was kept in the ice house for 13 months under conditions similar to those prevailing in earlier times.

The location of ice houses in relation to the main house was often quite arbitrary. In most cases they seem to be neither close to the source of the ice nor to the kitchens. A distance of several hundred metres is not uncommon. This is one of the reasons why, in Wayward Widow, there is no point in shouting for help!

Information on Ice Houses derived from an article in Sussex Industrial History, Issue 14.