Please help me understand my kitchen

[JoceAndChris]

Now the kitchen is clean and tidy, thanks to the forum being down for a night, I though I'd get my camera out and pick your collective brains again. There are a number of old things in this kitchen that I don't really understand.

Firstly, what's this floor made of? I can't work out if it's ceramic or stone. How old might it be?

I think it started out more uniformly orangey and efflorescence has taken its toll. Pools of water appear on it, and it sweats through its tiny pores. There are 2 carved rectangles in this floor where some piece of furniture or equipment has stood a very long time ago, so you can see a cross section. From this it appears there may be flagstones underneath.

 

[Feltwell]

They look like Victorian quarry tiles to me, as they resemble the original tiles I have in my kitchen & scullery, although mine are nowhere near as bad for efforvesence (or however you spell it!) as yours.

If you think you have flags underneath then maybe these were laid on a screed of some kind over the top in order to give a more level floor. Home improvement just over 100 years ago perhaps?

 

[JoceAndChris]

Thanks Feltwell. What's a quarry tile made of? And what's a screed?

 

[Feltwell]

I believe they are just an unglazed plain clay fired tile. Very durable and cheap, they were commonly used as a functional rather than decorative tile, so you tend to see them in kitchens, sculleries, larders etc. Even my cellar floor is made of them.

They were commonly produced by manufacturers of items such as clay roofing tiles, as the manufacturing method is very similar. Dennis Ruabon is one of the best known, they made pretty much everything for my house - bricks, roof tiles, ridge tiles, wall copings, floor tiles etc etc. They still make quarry tiles now.

A screed is the layer of material that the tiles are bedded on. Now it would be sand & cement, hopefully yours is sand and lime - so your Victorian builder may have made up a sand and lime mix, spread it across the original flagstones, and then laid the quarry tiles in that. Modern quarry tiles are very uniform, old ones are not always, mine vary in thickness quite a lot - so each tile would be bedded in the mix and made to give a level floor.

All this is conjecture though, and others may have a better idea!

If you want more quarry tiles to make repairs then pretty much every salavge yard I've been to has some, they were so widely used. Colours vary though.

 

[AMc]

If you were a bit further south then I would suggest pamments - I know that's the term in Norfolk and Suffolk. My pamments (9"x9" and 12" by 12") are in the region of 2" thick. I have a stack of old and more modern quarry tiles outside that are 6"x6" but only 1/2" thick. I'm not sure at what size or thickness a quarry tile becomes a pamment.

 

[Hatster]

They look like my pammets to me - being the East Anglian equivalent to Italian terracotta tiles

 

[JoceAndChris]

Thanks so much guys! I've read "quarry tile" and "pamment" lots on here but haven't been too sure what's meant by it. Really interesting stuff, and I hadn't even thought about clay. I suppose one day I'll have to decide if I take them up in search of flagstones - that's a tricky one, but as you can see, they aren't in great condition. If I have to spend time/money/ effort lifting and replacing the worst I'd rather put that effort into restoring the flagstones, if that makes sense, but I just don't know what condtion they're in either, or even if they're there. (I think they are because when you pull away that little stone door one is peeping out underneath the quarry tiles.)

I'm satisfied with question 1, can I move onto my next questions?

Why are these brick arches here? What was their purpose? What was this room for?

You see where the wooden supporting beams are in the foreground of the photo: that used to be a wall. The previous owner removed it to make one big kitchen room.

What would have been in this recess?

And what is this stone door for? Behind it is a small, curved space, and old rubble.

 

[Hatster]

Ooh, what a horrible kitchen. I bet you're looking forward to plastering over all those old bricks and putting in a proper artex ceiling. B&Q are doing special deals on laminate this weekend, so you could cover up those bricks and those funny arches too.

Sorry, couldn't resist

Are you sure there are flags underneath? We have the original pammets in our sitting rooms, and floor bricks in the dining room. As I said, Cambridge doesn't have stone, so we'd be very unlikely to have flags.

I think your pammets (?) look lovely - why would you want to take them up? Surely they're much warmer in appearance than grey flags? It's not the lightest room, is it, and I think that terracotta makes a better floor than grey stone. They go very well with the pink ceiling IMHO.

 

[JoceAndChris]

You got it pretty spot on with the family's reaction to my new kitchen Hatster! :lol:

I think your pammets (?) look lovely - why would you want to take them up? Surely they're much warmer in appearance than grey flags? It's not the lightest room, is it, and I think that terracotta makes a better floor than grey stone. They go very well with the pink ceiling IMHO.

Well, the walls and ceiling may have to be limewashed eventually, and you can see from the following pics that I don't have any kind of kitchen floor harmony going on (which I'd like), and that the flags here are a warm honey colour.

But I agree with you, I like the pammets or pamments or quarries or whatever they're called and I wouldn't take them up without knowing there were flagstones underneath.

 

[robgil]

could it have been a Victorian dairy room?
the floor would have been wetted down with water to keep the room cool and the produce would have been placed on top of the arches , close to the cool floor.
i have seen one dairy room that had a fountain in the middle of the floor to keep it cool.

 

[Penners]

I don't have any kind of kitchen floor harmony going on

They look like pamments to me, too, and I absolutely forbid you to take them up. Why do you have to have "kitchen floor harmony" - and what is it? Do you mean that you want all of the floors to be the same?

I can't think of anything nicer than having such varied examples of historic flooring. You're very lucky.

 

[robgil]

very lucky indeed , it would make my day to find a floor like that.
i think this looks like a relatively recent floor but i doubt you will find anything underneath as it seems to butt up to the older looking floor in the fore ground.

i also doubt you could replace them and make it look like one single floor covering. it might only look like you have put down a reclaimed floor and tried to make it match.

 

[Schoolmarm]

Robgil, it looks stepped to me.

Both look old and I agree with Penners on everything else.

 

[JoceAndChris]

B*gger I'm confused now about what to do. My hope was to take the whole lot up and find 18th C flagstones underneath, and get the kitchen to look the same as the adjoining breakfast room. (the 1980s ceramic tiles do step down to the very old flags) But you all seem to think this floor should be left, even though it's a mish-mash, and it might be concealing something nicer.

Thanks for the dairy idea Robgil, I hadn't considered that. It certainly is a very cold room. And I like the pics! But it's Georgian here, not Viccy, and the house is possibly a hunting lodge, possibly a den of debauchery, rather than a farmhouse ( although to be honest there is no proof whatsoever and that is a speculative summary of the previous owner) .

 

[Hatster]

Hoist by your own petard, Joce - you're trying to Grand Design your kitchen by going for consistency of flooring across the whole thing.

I agree that they're lovely, and that actually it looks rather good to have the different flooring in different areas - it really is absolutely charming, and would be sad to lose that touch of history.

 

[Flyfisher]

May I also add my vote for leaving the various floors as they are? They all look in pretty good condition and the variety is lovely. I think that changing them would be right at the bottom of my list of things to do, and if I ever reached that point I'd probably conclude that my work was done and leave them anyway.

 

[Penners]

My hope was to take the whole lot up and find 18th C flagstones underneath

But what if you rip them up and find nothing underneath? You've buggered up some lovely historic floors, for no purpose.

They're lovely. Love them and enjoy their variety.

 

[JoceAndChris]

OK OK OK, the floors stay in their hotch potchy historic state. Thanks very much for all the nice comments about them. Perhaps I've been poisoned by all the negative ones. I would have lifted just one or two pamments, of course, before committing to wholesale destruction, but I agree that it's only by removing the lot that you truly get to see what's underneath, and the state it's in.

I should have mentioned that the ceramic 1980s floor has been "tanked", I believe that's the correct expression, by which I mean I can see it's had a sheet of polythene laid under it as little bits poke out round the edges. I don't think this is doing my walls any good, but let's move on anyway.

The purpose of this thread was not to redesign the kitchen area or even solve the damp but to understand what originally took place in the different areas- if anyone has any further thoughts about the brick arches, the little stone door and what the recess might have housed please share.

I've got more puzzles, though, and hope you might be able to identify what went on here.

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[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3343/3616526270_c11c72d690.jpg

I don't think it was cooking because I really think that was done next door in the breakfast room where my Rayburn now stands. The second pic here shows the wall behind the Rayburn, and a little hole that gives you a glimpse into a kind of chimney thing. This chimney corresponds with the fire upstairs in the dining room. The warmth from the Rayburn can be felt on the flagstone floor upstairs, and I suppose that travelling warmth would have been created by a range as well.

 

[robgil]

bread oven or a meat smoker/dryer perhaps?

 

[Penners]

From your pictures it's a bit difficult to understand the relationship between the alcoves and any adjacent heat sources, but kitchens used to have various cavities/niches/alcoves. The best-known was of course the bread oven - usually close to the fire, from where hot embers could be scooped to heat up the oven. But there were also little storage cupboards in warm areas, for keeping things like salt, herbs and spices dry.

Good decision on the floors, by the way. Sorry if I got a bit bossy!