The access was originally from the side of the grassy bank to the right (east) - below where the men are standing; this has been blocked at some time in the early twentieth century (the farmer does not remember it even as a child) and the man-lid substituted. This is now secured with bolts. The passageway leads straight into the upper side of the chamber, access to which would have been by wooden ladder when cleaning was necessary, perhaps every two or three years.
The deer shelter on top served to keep an overlayer of insulating dry earth. Condensation on the inner part of the brick roof was undesirable; in the Carlton ice-house (of the igloo type) there is a double layer of brick with air vents which actually encouraged evaporation from the surface of the ice, taking out heat and therefore contrary to intuition, keeping the ice colder. The ‘warm’ wet air was therefore allowed to blow away. That was probably a better design.
The ice supply came from the adjacent shallow (ideally about 3 feet deep) ‘valleys’ in the embankments, the beck, and from the ‘fish pond’ which ran beside the road below and opposite Church Lodge. The meadows all around were probably often flooded and the winters were seriously cold.. This had to be collected as dry and cold as possible and taken by cart to the icehouse, where it was stacked in the entry and then packed tightly into the cavity. An icehouse in Devon was recorded as taking thirty men more than five days to store forty tons of ice; a Cumbrian house paid fourteen men a bonus of ale, bread and cheese for four weeks’ work. It was then trampled or rammed into a dense mass.
When the ice was nearly up to the access passage, straw might be laid over it, and the food which was to be kept fresh throughout the summers merely laid on the ice surface on wooden trays or on shelves in the closest part of the passageway.
The passage was usually insulated by the use of at least three doors (like the Carlton example), but on the Tofts only an inner one remains.
The Icehouse 
