what was in here?

[fluffytail10]

Hello everyone, I recently moved to a cottage in north norfolk which has sadly been buffeted by the winds of modernisation. The house i think dates from late 18th or early 19c and was originally 2 and half cottages. Want i want to know is what kind of fireplaces would have originally been in the house? At present we have these awful browny yellow brick fireplaces which look so out of place. This chimney brest is about 2.5m wide and about 0.8m in depth, and in the corridor above (divided off from old bedroom) it continues at rather an angle. The upstairs fireplaces have been converted into cupboards and i'm guessing were enlarged at this point. Looking outside and in the attic it appears that the upper part of the chimneys have been rebuilt at some point.

Also does anyone know what the strange chimney/flue thing in the bathroom wld hv been for - its against what would hv been the old outside wall.

And finally in the other reception room there is a coal hole under the winder stairs, which after much cleaning was found to hv lovely, and im sure, original tiles on the floor, they carry on into the room but have been covered in concrete. Would it be possible to uncover them? or would they be completely ruined? is this concrete causing the damp in the wall?

im so glad i found this site - so interesting!

many thanks

 

[Hatster]

Hello Fluffytail, and welcome to the forums! Your cottage looks like it has real potential - very charming!

I'd recommend buying a copy of a book called English Cottage Interiors by Hugh Lander (you can get it from Abe books cheap) to see what sort of fireplaces you'd probably have had. You might well have had different sorts of fireplaces at different points, with one being removed and replaced by a more 'modern' version.

You might also like to get Hugh Lander's other books - I found his dogmatic but learned style makes for quite addictive reading!

Hatster

 

[fluffytail10]

thank you i shall get straight on to it!

 

[fluffytail10]

i found it on amazon for 1p!

 

[Hatster]

Great! Let us know how you find it and whether it has a picture of the right sort of fireplace.

 

[fluffytail10]

mmm yes page 102 is perfect - showing same ceiling heights, same door arrangement etc.

will be great to show the builder what we might expect to find.

thanks so much
xx

 

[christianb]

Hi Fluffytail,

The only real way to see what the original fireplace would have looked like is to, er, start taking the later bits out. Carefully. Whatever you do, never take a sledgehammer to the things!

I've just done one which had originally been an eight foot wide inglenook, later reduced to 5 feet, and then to about 4. But because they had put tie stones through to the back wall on the second alteration the decision was made to leave it at that as a big structural change would have been pretty expensive.

The 'thing' in your bathroom looks (from this distance!) as if it might be part of a stepped chimney breast. Many old buildings have this sort of thing, my own included - one is on the outside wall, and another within the house itself.

C.

 

[fluffytail10]

ok will put sledgehammer back..

thanks for your help
x

 

[Hatster]

Great - I'll check out page 102

One of the big kitchen ranges shown in there is apparently what used to be in our dining room, taken out 55 years ago when the farmer's son (now 80) married and the new daughter-in-law insisted on a proper modern kitchen! Like with Christian B's, knocking the crumbling plaster off revealed where it used to be a huge inglenook, made smaller in about 3 steps. People keep asking us if we're going to open the blcoked off fireplaces up, but I feel that a huge inglenook in my dining room is just not what I need (we already have two in the house, and four would be too much!).