There are many photographs on the Broadland Memories website which have yet to be properly identified, or have very little information accompanying them. I always welcome any further details that people can give on any of the images which appear within the archive.
Mystery Broad 1904
This is one such photograph which I keep going back to, but as yet have been unable to provide a location for. It was in amongst the wonderful collection of photographs which were taken by local amateur photographer Donald Shields between 1903 and 1904. It fell within a series of images which were taken on the River Yare, but I am certain that Donald didn’t necessarily add photographs to his albums in the order in which they were taken, so in reality it could have been anywhere on the system! It does appear to have been taken on a Broad – but which one? And the more I look at the building in the background, the more I wonder if it was possibly an ice-house? I know that a thatched ice-house was built on Surlingham Broad, but the building in Donald Shields photograph bears no resemblance to the image I have seen of it.
Was this an ice-house?
As can be seen in the cropped version of the photograph, the building has a ramp or elevator like structure leading up from the waters edge, which seem to have been a feature of the Broadland ice-houses. I know that there were ice-houses at various locations around The Broads, although I have to confess that I know very little about them other than the fact that the gathering of ice from the broads and upper reaches of the rivers during the winter months provided a valuable boost to the income of wherry owners. Ice was needed in plentiful supply by the fishing industry at Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth both for the fleets themselves as they set out to sea, and for later packing the prepared fish into barrels for transport. Wherrymen would break the ice and then scoop it into their holds using a “dydle” which was basically a large wire net strung between long poles, before transporting it off for storage in one of the ice-houses. I believe there were at least two large ice-houses at Yarmouth (one of which still remains at Gorleston), and also an icehouse at Lowestoft for the fishing fleets. In his book “Black Sailed Traders”, Roy Clark made mention of the fact that it wasn’t unknown for fishing smacks to put to sea in August with ice which had been collected in December and January.
A large ice-house also stood near to the Commodore public house on Oulton Broad – John Payne Jennings photographed the structure in the 1880s and that image can be found on this page of the Broadland Memories website. I’m not quite sure when this particular ice-house was demolished, but the land was later occupied by boatyards and has in more recent years had a small housing development built on it, the name Ice House Quay providing a reminder of it’s former use. Elsewhere around Broadland there are similar reminders of past ice-houses in the names of roads, dykes and buildings including, amongst others, Irstead and Catfield – whether these were for domestic use rather than trade I am not certain.
If you can help with identifying the location above, or have any more information on the lost ice-houses of Broadland then, as ever, I would be delighted to hear from you.
Your query re-mystery ice house: I believe this is Surlingham Broad – looking across the broad from the mouth of the lower dyke to the Yare, towards the NW corner of the Broad. I have been trying to work out where this structure was for some time: the photograph matches some C19 maps I have seen, which show the footprint of a building in that corner. I suspect the ice-house was built there, as it is a very narrow strip of land between the Broad and the river. That means they could have harvested the ice from the still waters of the Broad – and loaded it onto wherries moored up at the back of the building, on the River – which would presumably stay open for traffic for much more of the year. Good to see the picture: oddly enough, we spent Saturday night moored up just infront of where the building would have stood. Best, Mark Wells
Hi Mark – many thanks for your reply. The landscape certainly looks right to be Surlingham Broad to me and was my first thought on seeing the photograph. However, as mentioned, it doesn’t look like the same building attributed as being Surlingham ice-house which was published in Robert Maltsters “Wherries & Waterways” book. I have just added another post to the blog in regard to that image and the limited information I have about the ice-house there.