Strange Chimney Breast *LINK*

[Anonymous]

I wonder if anyone out there can help work out what the purpose of the brick construction we have found around the chimney breast in our house is. The house was originally built we believe in around 1700 but obviously has had many changes and additions since. Please see the pictures at the link provided - the room is on the first floor. The house is in Sussex.
We can't understand why the left hand brick "pillar" is there - it has nothing (as far as we can tell ) to do with the inglenook fireplace in the room immediately below on the ground floor nor any obvious other function. Also, there is the strange 3 brick course dip in the middle with what appears to be a deliberately formed recess in its top surface.
Anyone seen anything like this before and know what the idea of it was?



Fireplace photos

 

[Anonymous]

Thats interesting isnt it. Any indication that the floor levels may have been changed or floors replaced ?

 

[Anonymous]

Frankly, I have no idea and my knowledge of SE houses is virtually nil.
However, two possibilities spring to mind -
The storage of salt by the fireplace kept it dry.
Smoking meat.
I would think that the people who are most likely to know would be The Weald and Downland Museum. This place can't be a million miles from you and is a fascinating day out anyway. Mike.

 

[Anonymous]

Mark, no, nothing obvious re floor level changes. There are other joint holes in the ceiling beam but my guess is that it and other timbers in the house came from elsewhere and were recycled here at some point years ago.

 

[Anonymous]

Good suggestion re the museum, I'll contact them and see if they can help.
Thanks

 

[Anonymous]

I dont _know_ what it is, but its easy to guess. The shape of it means the fire's hot fumes would enter the cavity at the top, move downward, and return to the fireplace at the bottom. So, you have heat and smoke... perfect for smoking, cooking, drying, what have you.

Admittedly the absence of a door is a minor glitch in the works, maybe the front had some brickwork done up at some point.

NT

 

[Anonymous]

NT, thanks for your suggestions - I think you are right about the right-hand "pillar" over the actual fireplace - I lit a fire in there yesterday and the flat top of the structure did indeed get warm - in fact it is a flat stone up there rather than just brick as I thought before so perhsps for drying or warming something up. However, this doesn't explain the other side which just seems to be a brick tower with another stone top but no way to get inside it and the recess in the middle.

 

[Anonymous]

It's odd as this is not a downstairs room, where you would expect the main fire for cooking to be. However, the building has possibly been used in the past by various tenants and so cooking may have taken place there.

I agree about smoking, but the other stuff is a bit of a mystery, although it may be part of an earlier structure. The left rectangular recess doesn't look like the right shape for an oven, but I think a salt or other dry goods (spice) store is the likely answer. It may have had a simple door once. The dip is an odd one - but again, dry storage away from rodents was always useful. It may even have simply been used as a warming shelf, or somewhere to keep cooking utensils near the fire.

 

[Anonymous]

Some more information on the left hand part of the brick structure - see picture link below.
The top is some flat stone similar to our Horsham slab roof material. Under that there are two large beams / lintels running front to back - the front resting on the double width course of bricks at the front of the brick structure. They then pass through the bricks at the rear and I'm not sure when they end - they appear to support the room-side wall of the main chimney where there is an opening - see later in this description. However, under the timbers there is a rectangular void talking up the entire inside space of the brick structure. The floor of this is flat. The rear side of the void is open into the main chimney of the downstairs inglenook fireplace. Close to top of the void and again running front to back are two roughly shaped round pieces of wood (now somewhat rotten / eaten).

It is difficult to tell now as there is a register plate in the Inglenook so I can't look upwards, but it appears that this void is like a sort of side chamber off the main chimney which presumably could be reached from up inside the inglenook, although it would have been quite high up. I assume this means that it was some sort of smoking chamber and that the round pieces of wood would have been somewhere from which to hang meat(?). Anyone seen anything like this before?



http://burstow.dnsalias.org/bedroomfireplace.htm