In 1891 I was excavating a village at the edge of Trewortha Marsh, on
the Bodmin Moors, in Cornwall. There were a number of oblong huts, but
one seemed to have been occupied by more than one family, as it was
divided into stalls, by great slabs of granite set up on edge, and
in front of each stall was a hearth on the soil, and the soil burnt
brick-red from heat.
The pottery found strewn about was all wheel-turned, but early and
rude, and no trace of glass could be found. These habitations belonged
to a period after the Roman invasion, and probably to Britons.
The hearth is the centre of family life, what the hall is to the
manor. About it gather all who are bound together by community of
blood and interest, and this is still recognized, for it is counted an
unwarrantable presumption in a stranger to poke your fire.
But how small and degenerate is our fire from what it once was. Coal
having taken the place of logs, the hearth has been reduced and the
grate has supplanted the dogs or andirons, and the gaping fireplace is
closed in.
I know an old Elizabethan mansion where the chimney-stack containing
three flues descends into the hall and has in it three fireplaces, so
that simultaneously three fires could burn in the same room, and the
family circle could fold about the three hearths combined into one in
an almost complete circle.
And what chimneys those were in old times! Bacon-sides were hung in
them, so large were they, and not infrequently a ladder could be put
up them to communicate with a little door that gave access to a secret
place.
[Illustration: A CHIMNEY-PIECE
End of Seventeenth Century]
I was looking not long ago at the demolition of a good yeoman's
dwelling in Cornwall. By the side of the hearth, opening into the
kitchen-hall, was a walled-up door, against which usually a dresser
or cupboard stood. This walled-up door communicated with a goodly
chamber or cellar formed in the thickness of the chimney, and without
an opening to the light outside. Access to this chamber could, however,
always be had by means of a hand-ladder placed when required in the
chimney. This admitted through a door in the chimney to the receptacle
for kegs--for that was the real purpose of the concealed place, it was
the yeoman's cellar of spirits that had never paid customs. When a
fresh supply was taken in, the door into the kitchen was unwalled and
the cellar filled with kegs, then walled up again and plastered over.
But as spirits were wanted they were got by means of the ladder--keg by
keg.
It was in such a chamber in the wall, to which access was alone
obtainable through the chimney, that Garnet and Oldcorne were concealed
after the Gunpowder Plot. This is how Ainsworth describes the place of
retreat: "Mrs. Abindon conducted the two priests to one of the large
fireplaces. A raised stone about two feet high occupied the inside of
the chimney, and upon it stood an immense pair of iron dogs. Obeying
Mrs. Abindon's directions, Garnet got upon the stone, and setting his
foot on the large iron knob on the left, found a few projections in the
masonry on the side, up which he mounted, and opening a small door made
of planks of wood, covered with bricks and coloured black, so as not to
be distinguishable from the walls of the chimney, crept into a recess
contrived in the thickness of the wall. This cell was about two feet
wide and four high, and was connected with another chimney at the back
by means of three or four small holes. Across its sides ran a narrow
stone shelf, just wide enough to afford an uncomfortable seat."
But these wide chimneys, if they allowed ascent, also permitted
descent, and many a house was entered and burgled by this means.
There was in my own neighbourhood, about a century ago, a man who lived
in a cave above the Tamar, in Dunterton Wood, whose retreat was known
to none, and who was a terror to the neighbourhood. He was wont during
the night to visit well-to-do persons' houses within reach, get over
the roof to the chimney of the hall, and descend it. Once in the house
he collected what he listed, unbarred the door, and walked away with
his spoil.
So great was the terror inspired by this man in the neighbourhood that
all householders who had anything to lose had spiked contrivances of
iron put into their chimneys, so that the burglar in descending at a
rapid pace stood a chance of being impaled. The other day, in repairing
my hall chimney, I came on this contrivance.
The end of the man was this. Colonel Kelly, of Kelly, was out one day
with his pack of foxhounds, when they made a set at the cave, and so it
was discovered with the man in it and a great accumulation of plunder.
I believe he was hung.
The same cave was employed as a place of refuge for an escaped convict
some fifty years ago. After that, the late Mr. Kelly blew up the cave
with gunpowder, and its place is now occupied by the ruins of the rock
above. It can conceal no more lawbreakers.
There was something very pleasant in the old evening round the great
fire. If one of wood, then, in a farmhouse, the grandfather in the
ingle-corner was an indispensable feature. A wood fire requires
constant attention, and it was his place to put the logs together as
they burnt through; and he knew he was useful, and when the farmer's
wife or his granddaughter came to the hearth for a bit of cooking she
had always a pleasant word for the old man.
The settle was another feature.
There is a species much used formerly in Somersetshire and Devon, and
perhaps elsewhere. It was a _multum-in-parvo_. The back opened and
disclosed a place in which sides of bacon were hung. Above was a long
narrow cupboard for the groceries. The seat lifted--for what think you?
As a place where the baby could be placed in greatest security whilst
the mother was engaged at the fire. I believe that dealers now call
them monks' seats. Monks' seats! they belonged to women and babies.
But a dealer knows how to humbug his customers.
[Illustration: THE SETTLE]
I was once in a certain county, I will not say which, and visited a
gentleman who had bought and built a fine house, very modern, but very
handsome. Then the fancy took him to be possessed of old oak, so he
went to a dealer.
"My dear sir," said Lazarus, "I have the very thing for you--a superb
antique oak mantelpiece and sideboard--the finest in England of
the date of Henry VIII. But they are all in an ancient mansion, a
black-timbered hall in Cheshire or Shropshire--I forget which. Would
you care to go down and see it? The house is to be pulled down, and I
must remove the contents."
Of course Mr. Greenhorn went, bought all at a fabulous price, and
brought them to his mansion. Well, anyone with the smallest knowledge
of old oak would see at a glance that this was all Belgian stuff,
made up of bits from old churches, put together higgledy-piggledy
without any unity of design--stuff that no ancient would have designed,
for there was no design in it. And the dealer kept this Cheshire or
Shropshire black-timbered house regularly supplied with this detestable
rubbish, and regularly took greenhorns to it to pay down heavy gold for
what was worth nothing but a few Belgian francs.
At the risk of branching away from my topic, I must have another word
relative to dealers.
There is still in England a good deal of good plain old oak; old
cradles, old standing clock cases, old bureaus, etc., without any
carving on them, but fine in their lines and in their simplicity.
These wretches buy them up and give them into the hands of mechanical
carvers to adorn in "Elizabethan style," and then they sell these good
old articles of furniture--defaced and spoiled and rendered all but
worthless.
"Good heavens!" said I to one of these gentry; "you have utterly,
irrevocably ruined that noble wardrobe."
"Well, sir, I couldn't sell it for one-tenth of the price hadn't I done
this. The buyers like this, and I have to suit their taste."
To return to the hearth and to the settle.
A friend one day saw a screen of carved oak in a cottage. He bought it
for half a guinea, and then called me into consultation on it. With a
little study it revealed itself to be the back of a settle of Henry
VII.'s reign. The mortices for the arms and for the seat were there;
also nail marks showing that stamped leather had been fastened to the
back below the sculpture. There were pegs showing where had been the
pilasters sustaining the canopy, and one scrap of canopy still extant.
I show the restoration (p. 57).
Fine though this be, I know something better still--not in art, but for
cosiness, and that is the curved settle, it is constructed in an arc.
In a farmhouse I know well are two such settles, and they are connected
by a curved iron rod fastened to the ceiling, and there are green baize
curtains depending from this rod.
On a winter evening, the farmer and his wife and the serving maidens
and young men come into the kitchen, and the circle is completed with
chairs or stools, the curtains are drawn, the fire is made up, and a
very jolly evening is spent with cakes and cider, and tales and jokes
and song.
I was at a sale one day--a very small farm but an old one. A farmer
bid for the settle--a small one. One of his daughters was there. She
turned to her sister and said: "I say, Nan, vaither he've gone and
bought the settle, and it's lovely; it will hold only two."
"Well, Jane," said her sister, "I reckon--that depends. You must have
the right one beside y'; then it's just large enough, and you don't
want no more."
When I was a child, some sixty years ago, the mat before the fire was
the line of demarcation, beyond which a youngster might not go.
"My dear," said my grandmother, "fires are made to be seen--not felt."
Oh, how we shivered beyond the mat! I used to look at a patent
bacon-toaster, and resolve, when I was a man and independent, to have a
curved settle formed of burnished tin, and to sit before a roaring fire
in the focus of all the converging rays, and never stir therefrom from
Michaelmas till Lady Day. But the curved settle answers the purpose.
Among the troubles and irritations of life, one of the worst is a smoky
chimney, and among all the hideousness of modern contrivances nothing
surpasses the cowl.
It is very curious that architects should set themselves to work to
violate first principles, and so involve us in these troubles. In the
first place, to ensure that a chimney shall not smoke, the flue must
be made large enough to carry the smoke. This is a principle very
generally neglected. Next it is necessary that the chimney should not
have a flat top, for then the wind beats against the broad surface,
and, of course, prevents the smoke from rising, and much of it is
deflected down the flue.
What our forefathers did was to reduce the top to a thin edge that
could not arrest and drive the smoke down, but would, on the contrary,
assist it in rising. Or else they covered over the orifice with a roof,
open at the sides, that prevented the wind from descending, and enabled
the smoke to get away whichever way the wind blew.
In order to illustrate what I mean, I have simply taken my pencil and
gone outside my house, and have drawn an old and a new chimney-top.
The chimney-piece or overmantel is the reredos of the family altar, and
should contain the arms of the family or the portraits of ancestors.
No portion of an old manor-house was so decorated and enriched as this;
and the hall fireplace received pre-eminent attention.
[Illustration: THE CHIMNEY-TOP, ANCIENT AND MODERN]
Happily we have in England numerous and splendid examples; but a vast
number were sacrificed at the end of last century and the beginning of
the present, when large looking-glasses came into fashion, and to make
place for them the glorious old sculptured wood was ruthlessly torn
down. If the reader is happy enough to possess a copy of Dr. Syntax's
_Tours_, he will see the period of transition. In the second Tour is
a plate representing the doctor visiting the Widow Hopefull at York.
The room is panelled with oak, the ceiling is of plaster beautifully
moulded, the chimney-piece is of oak carved, but painted over, and
the large open hearth has been closed in, reduced, and a little grate
inserted.
In the same volume is a picture of Dr. Syntax making his will. Here the
large open fireplace remains, lined with Dutch tiles, and the fire is
on dogs. All the lower portion of the mantel decoration remains, but
above the shelf everything has been removed to make way for the mirror.
In the same volume is Dr. Syntax painting a portrait, and here again is
a lovely panelled room with plaster ceiling and a simple but charming
chimney-piece of excellent design.
[Illustration: FIREPLACE AND CHIMNEY-PIECE, YORK]
Now turn to the first Tour, and look at Dr. Syntax mistaking a
gentleman's house for an inn. Here we have the chimney-piece supported
on vulgar corbels, all of the period when Rowlandson drew; above the
shelf is a painting in the worst description of frame. When Rowlandson
made his drawings, he was absolutely incapable of appreciating Gothic
design, and whenever he attempted this he failed egregiously, but the
feeling for what was later, Elizabethan and Jacobean, was by no means
dead in him, and he drew the details with a zest that shows he loved
the style.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: OLD FURNITURE]