Readablewiki

Tugnet Ice House

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Tugnet Ice House is a large historic ice storage building at Spey Bay, near the River Spey in Moray, Scotland. It is a Category A listed building and the biggest ice house that still exists in the United Kingdom. It dates from 1830, built to replace an earlier ice house that was ruined by flooding in 1829. The purpose was to store ice to keep salmon packs cold for transport to London.

The Ice House is part of the Tugnet salmon-fishing station set up by the Gordon Estate in the late 18th century, which once employed about 150 people. Its structure includes three long brick vaults, each split into two parts, with square gabled ends and curved turf roofs. It sits mostly underground; only about a third is visible. The main entrance opens into a central chamber, from which five others can be reached. The floors are cobbled and slope toward drains. Small openings on the north and east sides acted as ice chutes, letting winter ice from nearby pools be dropped into the chambers.

The ice house stayed in use until 1968. It was listed as Category A in 1971. In 1981 it was turned into a museum about local wildlife and the history of salmon fishing and boat building. The site later came under the care of Whale and Dolphin Conservation and is now part of the Scottish Dolphin Centre, offering tours and wildlife-watching activities.


This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 02:49 (CET).