Building record MDR16475 - Arched Stone Structures and Ice House to the rear of No 34A Lodge Drive, Bridgehill

A Grade II listed covered storage ensemble incorporating ice house and vaulted chambers. They were built c. 1793 for George Benson Strutt as part of the Bridge Hill House estate. They have a gritstone masonry façade with brick interior walling and vaulting. The ice house and vaulted cellars were built as service facilities for Bridge Hill House, completed in 1793 for George Benson Strutt, one of the sons of Jedidiah Strutt, founder of the Belper textile mills, industrialist and entrepreneur. The house was demolished in 1938, and the landholding re-developed for housing. The ensemble of vaulted storage cellars or chambers and ice house to the rear of No.34a Lodge Drive, Belper, was associated with the development of Bridge Hill House in 1793 is of special interest in a national context both for its architectural quality and for its historical association with the nationally-significant Strutt family industrial dynasty of the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire. It is an extremely well preserved, capacious and carefully detailed structure, which unusually combines different kinds of storage facilities in a single unit and which characterises the ways of storing and preserving foodstuffs prior to the introduction of refrigeration and canning. See list description for more details. (1)