Inheritance :: the fireplace

Inheritance :: possession by transmission from past generations

Chambers Concise Dictionary

The house we live in was built sometime in the late 1880s - so it is now over a hundred and twenty years old. Over those many decades so much has changed in this part of London - and in the house itself.  But there are a few little bits and pieces we live with every day that are still original.  The doors downstairs, most of the floorboards, the ceiling roses, and the fireplaces.

The front foom fireplace is still used by us, in the same way and for the same purpose as it was by the first owners when Queen Victoria was on the throne. The chimney sweep tells me that we have the original flue, grate, chimney stack, ironwork and tiles - everything about it today is just as it was in 1880.

The fireplace is really very small - about 30cm across and 25cm deep - and designed to burn coal, not logs.  For such a tiny fireplace it gives out an immense amount of heat.  Coal burns very slowly and intensely, glowing with heat rather than giving off flames; and the fireplace is made with cast iron which radiates heat extremely well back into the room.  So we don't just get the heat from the hot coals, but also the heat from the cast iron.

Back in 1880 the owners of the house would have had their coal delivered by a horse and cart.  What is now our under-the-stairs cupboard and home to all our camping equipment, would have been a coal cellar back then.  A cole hole in the path leading up to the front door would have been opened, and the coal poured down straight into the cellar.  Nowadays we have to burn smokeless fuel which we buy in bags from the local coal merchant. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1956, mainly as a result of the Great Smog a couple of years earlier, and as a result we are not allowed to burn wood or coal in London. The smokeless fuel that we used is derived from coke, and burns in exactly the same way as coal but without the smoke.

I start the fire with a pile of kindling over a firelighter.  G's grandmother taught him how to light a fire and then he taught me when we moved into this house.  She did not use firelighters though.  When she was in service she twisted old newspaper into tight knots and used that to start the fire; piling the coal carefully on top once the flames were going.  Then once the first coals are glowing you can give the whole fire a big poke with the poker and shovel more coal on top.

An open fire needs to have its chimney swept every year, to keep it clean and free from bird and coal debris.  The chimney sweep of the twenty first century still wears black clothes and still uses the big old round brushes you know from the Mary Poppins film.

But now he very carefully lays out thick (black) dustsheets and hoovers up all the soot from the chimney with a bright yellow hoover.  I'm always amazed and impressed how he comes and goes within half an hour, but leaves no mess behind at all.

I love our fire. Mainly because it just works so well, and for something so functional it is also beautiful to look at.  I like to imagine the very first owners of this house being whisked forward in time a hundred and twenty years to meet us and look round the house as it is today.  They would be astonished at the computers, the electric lights, the inside toilet, the washing machine, the plastic toys, the iPods and G's wetsuit.  And I think they might also be surprised that amongst all this modernity we still use and love their old open coal fireplace.