INTRODUCTION

Over the past 40 years the study of the vernacular kitchen fireplace and its appurtenances in the South-West has produced a number of well-observed and pioneering papers. Written by fieldworkers in vernacular architecture, they have made valuable contributions to an understanding of the subject by searching out a variety of structural features associated with the fireplace and by publishing excellent descriptions, measured drawings and photographs of them. Their work has provided an established nomenclature for these features and led to widely held beliefs about their functions.

The present paper challenges some of the fundamental conclusions arising from this body of work. unlike all the earlier studies, whose conclusions have been drawn mainly from survey of surviving structures, it considers the physical evidence alongside that drawn from contemporary documentation of domestic processes, combined with practical working knowledge.

BOILING FOOD, BREWING LIQUORS AND LAUNDRY

Simmering food in a ceramic or metal pot held over a fire on short legs, on a brandreth or from a pot-hanger, is a wasteful process: most of the heat simply rushes past the cooking vessel and is lost in the air above. The construction of a furnace – a mass of clay or masonry enclosing the pot to within a few centimetres of its surface – provided a more efficient means of achieving the same end. Structures of this type provided hot water not only for boiling joints of salt meat, puddings, etc., but for brewing and laundry.