Help with bread oven!

[JohnCalwell]

Hello all.

I am restoring a Lodge House built in 1828.

During the restoration I have stumbled across an old bread oven behind the plaster.

I am now struggling to work out how it would have originally been left. There was a wall above the oven but it seems like it was a later addition, when removing it I found some Lambert and Butler cigarette butts in the debris behind the wall, so unless cigarette butts were around in 1828 they must have been thrown in at a later date.

I am no good at describing it so I have included some pictures. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words...

My question is.....how would this have been originally left? I want to expose the oven, it is a key feature of the building, but I want to be faithful to the original design.

Does anyone have any pictures of similar ovens?

Any help would be really appreciated.....

 

[livias]

Bread ovens that I have seen in Suffolk tend to have the bread inandout hole round the corner from the fire hole presumably so the baker does not get too hot and the bread get too sooty.

 

[Zebra]

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be along in a minute, but it could be that whoever smoked those cigarettes went through the same thought process you're going through now. I have never seen one with another opening that high up, above the main oven, but it could be. Are the bricks of the same type as the rest?
I don't quite understand where the flue is either, and where the smoke goes...

 

[JanieB]

The farm I moved into with my ex husband several years ago had three bread ovens. They were all domed chambers with an iron door. The ovens would have been heated by filling the chamber with burning faggots of wood which would then have been scraped out before putting the dough inside to cook. There were no fire chambers or ash chambers. Only one had an escape for smoke and that led to another chamber with hooks in which we presumed was for smoking meat. The smoke was then directed back into the chimney flue.

I can't put my hands on my copy at the moment but Elizabeth David's book on English Bread and Yeast Cookery has a very good chapter on regional variations of the bread oven.

 

[Zebra]

I don't think mine ever had a door - at least, I can't see any fixing holes in the brickwork.

 

[88v8]

Our are also of the no-flue variety. One still retains its free-standing wooden door. There would certainly be a door, wood, or later on, iron.

The OP's oven looks pretty sophisticated. Perhaps his CO would have knowledge of other similar in the area?

Ivor

 

[noj]

Here's ours with its free standing wooden door. The oven appears to be a later addition to the main brickwork - but since it's all been power sanded (aargh!) the bricks look fairly uniform.

The oven part is a brick dome (no mortar) and there's a flue from somewhere above these bricks that vents into the main inglenook. There's quite a draw through the oven when the main inglenook flue is open and the door is lifted out of the oven.

So far as I can determine (after a lot of asking Google) the fire would have been built on the floor of the oven and the ashes cleared once it had burnt down and heated the oven. At this point the bread is added and the door (well soaked?) is put in place for the cooking process.

The gnome's home doesn't appear to have any flue and there's way too much brickwork between it and the oven for it to have ever served any heating purpose - best guess it that this was a wood store, although it has a very narrow opening compared to the available space behind?

But if anyone has a more definitive answer as to how these thing really worked I'd love to know...

 

[CliffordPope]

The OP's is exactly like ours (Welsh cottage, c 1800?)

There is a hinged cast-iron door to the bread oven - surely there has to be to get an even high temperature for baking?

Above the main oven is a large open hole, just like yours. Presumably this merely got warm and was for standing the bread to rise before baking? The flue passes up the wall behind it, and then joins the main fireplace flue further up the stack. No smoke actually passes through either of the ovens.

I found the remains of a similar in the house too (1875), and a partly preserved one in a farmhouse a mile away. They had blocked up the other openings, but left the iron door.

 

[Zebra]

Oh I see! A free-standing door. Well yes, mine must have had one of those then. Long gone.

 

[Penners]

three bread ovens. They were all domed chambers with an iron door. The ovens would have been heated by filling the chamber with burning faggots of wood which would then have been scraped out before putting the dough inside to cook. There were no fire chambers or ash chambers.

That's also my experience of bread ovens in three previous PP's that we have lived in - two in Suffolk and one in Oxfordshire. I wonder whether the OP's is actually a smoking chamber, for smoking fish and meat? I have never come across one of these myself, but I have heard of them.

 

[JohnCalwell]

Hello everyone.

Sorry for not replying for so long, and thank you for your comments.

Looking back I think my pictures were a bit confusing. The smoke does not pass through the clay dome in anyway, but there are four small flues that channel the smoke around the sides of the oven. These flues all meet in to a small chamber (I have removed some of the bricks but tried to demonstrate this with the white square on one of the pictures). The smoke then enters another flue which finally makes its way in to the main chimney.

I hope that sort of makes sense.

It seems that Clifford has the most similar in design. It is interesting to think that the void above the oven could have been used to rise bread or just to keep things warm.

Clifford, I know this is a cheeky, but have you left this void exposed? Don't suppose could trouble you for any pics?

Many many thanks.

John