YA Victorian Ghost Story/Time Travel Girl in a House

This is what I remember. I think it was from the 70s, but could have been an 80s book.

A girl in modern times, moves? holidays? into a house. She starts seeing strange things, maybe even acting them out? Or time travelling, as if she is there? A mystery that needs to be solved. The flashbacks are to Victorian times.

I remember an ice cellar in the garden, the discovery of which was pivotal. It was hidden among the rhododendron bushes. The solution involved a servant called Ada.

I think there was mention of some kind of bird in the title - sparrow, starling, wren?

I haven't read it yet, but is it not this? Janet Lunn, The root cellar. Suggestions from WorldCat.org:

Cat's magic
Author: Margaret Greaves
Publisher: New York : Harper & Row, 1981, ©1980.
Edition/Format: Book : Fiction : Juvenile audience : English
Through a cat's magic, Louise meets and rescues some unfortunate forebears from Victorian times.

Tom's midnight garden
Author: Philippa Pearce; Susan Einzig
Publisher: New York : Dell, 1979, ©1958.
While staying with his aunt and uncle, Tom discovers a beautiful garden that is visible only at night and meets a little girl from the Victorian era with whom he travels back in time.

Okay, that's a boy not a girl... Another:

Dream Spinner by Joanne Hoppe. Mary Barrone's imagination is captured by an article about a technique that allows dreamers to control the content of their dreams. Unwilling to confront her feelings about her father remarrying, the 15-year-old uses her dreams to travel back to the 1890s.

Could it be Helen Creswell's "Moondial". Girl from modern times (80's) meets children from the past, and there is a mystery to be solved, but I can't remember what, or if there was an ice cellar, servant called Ada, or a bird. I think the girl from the past had been warned never to look in a mirror, so all the mirrors in the house were covered up. I remember it being very atmospheric.
Penelope Lively's childrens books - at least the ones I've read - are similar, but I don't recognise the one you are describing.

Wow, thanks for the quick replies! The book it most seems like, after a quick amazon peek, is Penelope Lively's A Stitch in Time - no birds then - but as all I seem to remember is the resolution, and no one likes giving spoilers, I'll have to go and find a copy. But all the other suggestions look like good reads around the same theme, which I might just sneak in as well. Thanks!

Plot for A stitch in time: Maria comes to spend the summer holidays with her family in Lyme Regis. She finds a sampler stitched by a girl, Harriet, in 1865 and it becomes clear that something odd happened to Harriet - but what?

I've read the book and it doesn't sound like the book you're after.

Try searching on worldcat.org, or google books advanced search. I've tried both but no joy so far on an "ice cellar" in the garden, which I've never heard of. Would it have a different name?

"ice house" perhaps? One might be built partly underground, I should think.

Got it within minutes with that keyword "ice house", thanks MerryMary! Complete with the name Ada in the Kirkus Review! :)

Google Books
"ice house" rhododendron subject:"juvenile fiction"
Books›1 Jan 1950–31 Dec 1989›

A haunting air
Barbara Constance Freeman - 1977 - 158 pages - Snippet view
wasn't any house, ice or otherwise, among the rhododendrons. There was only a cold passage, with three doors, under the Hump. ... shall tell her about the toys in the hatbox, and the ice-house, and Cuthbert Wilberforce Webb.

A mysterious singing in the garden of the house next door sets a young girl delving into the past to discover its meaning and its source.

Kirkus review
The haunting air, sung over and over again in this quite satisfying ghost story, is an old English lullaby, and the singer is a lonely little spirit named Hanny Cole. First heard by teen-age Melissa in the garden behind Cranehurst where she and her author-father lease rooms, the ghost is also no stranger to their next-door neighbors, young widowed Helen and her inquisitive infant son, Bobson, who rent a modest home built on the site of the old Fairmead mansion. As it turns out, the melancholy crooning is meant for the baby, and from old newspaper clippings of the 1880s, a hatbox full of toys, a packet of letters, and a climactic confrontation with the ghosts of Hanny and her mother, Melissa and Helen are able to piece together Hanny's sad history: the neglected illegitimate daughter of a Fairmead housemaid, Hanny was always cared for by the owners, the Webb family. But Mrs. Webb died after giving birth to a stillborn child, and grief-stricken Hanny died soon after of pneumonia, still waiting for a baby to love and look after. The climax in which Melissa fights off the vengeful ghost of Ada Cole, thus allowing Hanny to stay and sing for little Bobson, is somewhat shrill and discordant considering the low key of the rest of the story, but the counterpointing of past and present is handled skillfully, and the evocation of late-Victorian England rings true.

Freeman, A haunting air

I've also seen references to "cold cellars".

ETA: And bookel solved it while I was thinking!

YAY! Glad to help.

That is such good work. Will have to think of more of a challenge next time! Yes, that was it exactly. And I had been through lots of combination of searches, but not ice house, but hadn't tried Google books. Also, it's been only over time racking my brain that I realised it may only have been a ghost and not actually time travel. It was very atmospheric, which was why the Lively one seemed similar. Oh good. Now to off to find it.

Google Books advanced search -- and I usually use a year range and "juvenile fiction" in the subject area. It is easier when books have the search inside feature, which was what I was hoping when I tried "ice house" and rhododendron together, as you would expect those words to be near each other in the text. Any clues no matter how small can be important in a search!

Bookfinder.com to find the cheapest copy, but check individual sites for accuracy.