The Igloo They Built Into the Mountain

In the late 1800s, the Slieve Donard Hotel was the finest resort on the coast of County Down. Guests arrived by train from Belfast expecting cold drinks, fresh meat, and chilled desserts. There was just one problem — refrigeration hadn’t arrived yet. The hotel needed ice, and it needed a lot of it, all year round.

The solution was older than the hotel itself. High on the lower slopes of Sliabh Donard (Donard’s Mountain), where the Glen River tumbles down from the High Mournes, the hotel’s owners built a structure that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Iron Age: a brick-and-granite chamber, buried into the mountainside, positioned above a cold mountain stream. An igloo of sorts — not made of snow, but of local stone, designed to stay cold through the warmest summer.

The principle was simple but effective. In winter, ice was collected — sometimes cut from frozen streams or gathered from higher ground — and packed into the chamber. The thick granite walls and the earth packed around the structure provided insulation. The cold stream running nearby kept the ambient temperature low enough that the ice lasted well into the warmer months. Straw and sawdust were layered between the ice blocks to slow the melt.

Servants would make the climb from the hotel, collect what was needed, and carry it back down. For decades, this hidden chamber in the hillside was the reason guests at the Slieve Donard could enjoy chilled champagne and fresh oysters while gazing at the Irish Sea.

When mechanical refrigeration arrived in the early 20th century, the Ice House lost its purpose overnight. The path up was no longer walked by hotel servants hauling ice. The forest crept in. The structure slipped from memory. For decades, it sat quietly in the hillside, known only to the odd local who remembered the old stories.

In 1996–97, the National Trust, working with the Hearth Historic Buildings Trust, restored the Ice House. The brickwork was repaired, the entrance cleared, the stonework stabilised. It now sits in the trees just off the main Glen River path — a small, solid, barrel-vaulted chamber that you can peer into and feel the cold air still pooling inside. Most people climb straight past, eyes on the summit of Sliabh Donard above. They don’t know what they’re missing.