Remains at estate show ‘ice’ bit of history
As the sun shines so my mind turns to ice lollies, the clink and crack of ice cubes in something suitably alcoholic - even home made ice cream if you’ve ever been brave enough.
Fridges and freezers are amongst society’s most wonderful of modern miracles. Food lasts longer and it can stored more safely. We also need to shop less often, but this of course means fewer shops - we have a Victorian shopping infrastructure and no amount of coffee shops will ever fill the gaps.
In the past ice and the cold were to be avoided, they were killers. Only the rich could enjoy ice, and by rich I mean the very rich. An absolutely essential component of any large estate was an ice-house where ice could be gathered over the winter and stored to keep and preserve meat and of course for enjoyment in the summer.
The pictured ice-house is all that’s left of the Old Polmaise Estate, it probably dates from the late 18th or early 19th century. It’s missing its top but you can see the double skinned stonework which worked like double glazing but kept the cold in rather than out!
Polmaise is a Gaelic word meaning ‘lovely pools’and the land is first recorded in the 12th century in the foundation grant by David I to Cambuskenneth Abbey.
The house was pulled down in the middle of the 20th century but had its origins in the 15th century. In the middle of the 19th century the family then built a brand new house on Gillies Hill but that was also demolished in the middle of the 20th century.
There simply wasn’t the money to keep these big houses going and it was considered progress but I feel we all lost something when they were demolished.