Winter Still Embraces The Sturdy Ice House

By Nancy K. Crevier

“The only refrigerator our mothers had was the well, and happy was the woman whose well was deep and cold and never-failing,” recalled Newtown’s first town historian Ezra L. Johnson in his now nearly century-old tome, Newtown 1705 to 1918.

“Two or three or more pails or baskets were almost always hung in it. She depended on it to cool her cream for churning, and to keep the butter solid for the table, as well as to preserve a little longer any fresh bit she was fortunate enough to have,” he added to his childhood recollection.

By the time Mr Johnson wrote those words in the early part of the 20th Century, it would still be several years before electric refrigeration in the homes became available and still more before it became commonplace. But refrigeration had taken a step forward from a hole in the earth.

Springhouses were one method of cooling. The insulated stone structures enclosed a spring of water that flowed about milk cans or other items, cooling the product. Even springhouses sometimes used ice, however, for additional cooling properties. And that ice was the product of an industry that thrived in most New England villages until widespread access to electricity made indoor refrigeration possible.

Blocks of ice were regularly harvested from frozen ponds in winter and stored in specially constructed houses, where, insulated by a double thickness of wall divided by an air space and packed in layers of sawdust, the ice remained available through the warm days of spring and into the summer.

The harvesting of ice and storing of the frozen blocks in icehouses goes back long before the founding of Newtown, says current Town Historian Dan Cruson. “It probably goes back to the Roman period,” he said.

At one time, Mr Cruson said, Newtown had many private and some commercial icehouses all around the different sections of town in the 1800s and into the beginning of the 20th Century. Harvesting ice was a labor-intensive period of about a week’s length, usually during January or February. The work was often shared by neighbors who harvested ice from local ponds and lakes, helping each other to fill their ice houses with the ice that they would then be able to use to keep milk, dairy products, and some meat products chilled right through the summer months.

Commercial Ice Houses

Commercial enterprises relied on storing ice to protect their products, as well. Borden’s Condensed Milk Co., located near the Newtown Depot on Church Hill Road, processed milk for local dairy farmers the early part of the 20th Century. In January 1910, according to The Newtown Bee, Borden’s leased the use of a local pond and harvested one ton of ice.

“It will require three or four days more to fill the smaller ice houses. If this cold weather continues it will be only a few days before the second cutting is ready,” the article reported. The ice that winter was more than 11 inches thick.

“Sawdust has an amazing capability to insulate,” said Mr Cruson, recounting a story of an icehouse in the Adirondacks that burned to the ground during the 1800s — yet several blocks of ice survived.

In January 1934, The Bee reported that Borden’s was still harvesting ice, taking ten days to gather ice from Foundry Pond, a body of water once located where I-84 now runs by Edmond Road. Most of the outlying sections of Newtown did not get electricity until the late 1940s, according to Mr Cruson, so people continued to rely upon nature to provide a means of cooling perishable foods.

The time was right, too, during the 19th and 20th Centuries, for ice harvesting. Anecdotally, there are records of much colder temperatures during the winters of that era, Mr Cruson said. The February 11, 1910, issue of The Newtown Bee records temperatures at 10 and 12 below zero for that week.

“We were coming out of a little Tudor Ice Age at this point, a natural trend, so it was measurably colder in the 1800s and 1900s,” he said. Ideally ice would be 12 inches or more thick for harvesting, and it was not uncommon for ice harvesters to cut out blocks of ice up to 18 inches thick, he said.

Today’s warmer trend would make ice harvesting challenging, but not impossible, said Mr Cruson.

“Right now on Lake Lillinonah the ice is eight to ten inches thick, and that’s about all you need. But who is going to do that hard labor?” he asked.

Ice harvesting was dangerous and difficult work. A pond or lake was first scored into blocks, then using a long saw with deep teeth and a double handle at one end, a person would have to saw around each scored block. As the blocks were removed to the sleigh or pushed across the ice, the adjacent ice could become very unstable. Mr Cruson does not doubt that the occasional ice harvester ended up in the frigid water.

Most icehouses had a skid leading from the pond into the icehouse, and the blocks of ice were pushed manually up these ramps into the house, where they were thickly layered with sawdust. Tons of ice would be harvested in this manner.

Ephemeral Outbuildings

Most of the icehouses from the heydays of ice harvesting are long gone now.

“Privies [outhouses] and barns still stand, but ice houses are pretty much forgotten. They are a rapidly disappearing part of our heritage,” Mr Cruson, but those remaining offer a glimpse at life before electricity. “That is something that we rarely experience today,” he added.

 “These outbuildings are ephemeral. They fall into disuse and go by the way of neglect,” Mr Cruson said. In all of Fairfield County, to the best of the historian’s knowledge, only two icehouses remain standing. Both are in Sandy Hook.

“One is on the property of a pristine farm on Chestnut Hill,” Mr Cruson said. That house is unusual in that it is located a distance away from the pond from which the ice was harvested. Aerial photos clearly show the track that was taken in hauling the ice from the pond to the icehouse, though, said Mr Cruson.

The other icehouse is part of Betty Lou Osborne’s Appleberry Pastures on Zoar Road.

“The ice house was here when my family moved from Southport in 1938,” said Ms Osborne. “We were told that it was a place for the town to store ice, making ice available for townspeople,” she said. Whether the ice was harvested by the farm’s original owners or town employees, she does not know. The icehouse was no longer in use by the time the Osborne family moved onto the property, nor did the family need it.

Growing up in Southport the family had an ice box indoors — “The ice man cometh,” quipped Mrs Osborne — “We never had to cut ice ourselves. My father paid to have electricity put into this property when we moved here, and they put in a refrigerator,” she recalled.

The Osborne icehouse is situated near a small spring-fed pond. The sturdy structure has been well-maintained, having been reincarnated over the course of the years as a shelter for hay and dry grain when the Osbornes kept cattle, and as a storage shed for various farm tools and small equipment.

Inside, the double wall construction is apparent, with the interior wall ending approximately two feet from the top, and a gap showing the exterior wall set back. Ice would have filled the room up to the top of the interior wall, and doors at either end provided easy access to the ice throughout the year.

The roof is high and pitched, and like many icehouses, is ventilated at the peak to prevent the build up of odors in the building. A tall louvered window at either end near the peak supplies the airflow in this particular icehouse.

“There used to be a wooden skidway from the pond at the dam end into the large doors of the ice house,” Ms Osborne said, but that ramp disappeared years ago.

“It’s so well built. We try to keep it up. It’s nice to have pieces of history remaining,” Ms Osborne said. “And the raccoons think it’s a nice place to go!”

Every small piece of history preserved serves to paint a clearer picture of the past, Mr Cruson said.

“These outbuildings are important. They are a part of our heritage.”