One solution, common on the estates of wealthy families from the seventeenth century onwards, was the icehouse: typically a brick-lined underground chamber, insulated with earth or stone, into which ice cut from frozen ponds and rivers during winter was packed and stored. On the east bank of the Glashaboy River in County Cork, tucked into the demesne woodland that once belonged to Dunkettle House, one such structure survives from around the 1700s.

The icehouse sits close to a boat slip and a boathouse, with Dunkettle Bridge and the River Lee lying roughly 125 metres to the south. Its position beside the river is not incidental. River-adjacent locations suited icehouses well, both for the practical business of harvesting ice in cold seasons and for the movement of goods by water. Dunkettle House itself stands approximately 350 metres to the east, and the icehouse formed part of the wider working infrastructure of that estate. The combination of icehouse, boathouse, and boat slip in a single riverside cluster gives a sense of how the estate's domestic and logistical needs were organised around the Glashaboy and its access to the Lee.