These structures, typically built into a slope or mound to exploit the insulating properties of earth, were packed with ice cut from nearby lakes or ponds during winter and could keep their contents cool well into the summer months. The ice house at Clonbrock Demesne in County Galway is one such survival, a quiet remnant of the domestic infrastructure that once supported life in a large Anglo-Irish estate.

Clonbrock was the seat of the Dillon family, later the Barons Clonbrock, who held the estate for several centuries and developed the demesne into a substantial and well-appointed property. Ice houses of this kind were a standard feature of improving landlords during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the fashion for cold desserts, chilled wine, and the preservation of meat and dairy made reliable refrigeration a practical priority rather than a luxury. The structure at Clonbrock would have formed part of a wider network of service buildings, walled gardens, and outbuildings that kept a house of that scale functioning through the year.