Found an old photo!

[Kearn]

The fireplace in the second picture is largely a phoney unless the flue behind make a hard dogleg to the left - for obvious reasons the bresummer beam directly above the fire cannot penetrate the chimney stack.

From the floor plans, the central chimney stack is a decent depth - the fake brick frontage here will be hiding a nice opening (hopefully!).

The flues also exit on the ridge line as expected.

Having the spine bearing in the stack is fairly normal, it doesn’t need to penetrate, just get a bearing on the brickwork above the inglenook bressumer, or an oak spreader on the brickwork - this was in our old place, once we restored it…

 

[Kearn]

I wonder if that beam isn’t a steel that’s been clad in timber and made to look like a beam. It’s a very hefty bit of timber otherwise!

It’s definitely a nice chunk of timber …