RUMFORDESQUE FIREPLACE

 

  This is a photo of the kitchen fireplace, woodbox, and bake oven in the Standish House, of which the original section (see previous posts) was built in 1690. The fireplace itself cannot be older than 1720. This is why and also why it was likely ahead of its time.

  When the house was originally built in 1690, it was a two-room cabin; located in what was then a nearly complete wilderness, it may have had a fireplace, but it certainly wasn't this one. Fireplaces at that time were likely crude things built of stone mortared with whatever was at hand. Brick was available only where there was clay and lime mortar where there was limestone, neither which exist in quantity around Preston, Connecticut. This is granite, basalt, gneiss and schist country. It is possible that mortar was available from the seacoast twelve miles away, where huge oyster beds sporting oysters the size of Volkswagens lined the bays and inlets. Their shells were often burned and slaked for lime.

  But the house was abandoned and reinvested, then raised and a cellar dug under it, when a proper fireplace was built. Which is the problem.

  Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, designed the Rumford Fireplace in the late 18^th century. Before his design, most fireplaces were deep rectangular things that used enormous amounts of wood, hardly heated a room, and often spit smoke back into the house. His design incorporated a taller, shallower firebox with angled sides and a nearly nonexistent rear wall. This allowed for smaller fires that radiated a lot more heat into the room.

  The firebox at the Standish House has a wider rear wall than an official Rumford fireplace, so it is not authentic (and so dubbed ('Rumfordesque’). And though I have no idea just how old it actually is (the stone hearth and structure in the cellar is said to be 1720 or thereabouts), if it is older than the 1790s, it predates Rumford’s design and utilizes nearly the same angles and height. I believe it is authentic to the 1720s, as the rest of the house was built around it and the lines haven't really changed.

   All I know is that a small fire really heats the room to a toasty degree. The dogs like it, anyway.

  
                            And that’s what really matters, isn’t it?

 

 

MY FIRST POST IN MONTHS

AND AN EXPLANANTION AS TO WHY

 

 

 

 

 

 

   This is the Standish House as of the day after I closed. I just HAD to remove the 1960s topiary; it didn't go.
   Actually, it did. Once Me and my Stihl were through.
   If you look closely, you can see the storm windows are open. This was taken in Late October. They are tightly shut now.
   This is why.

   I arrived with no water, heat, hot water, working kitchen, shower, or working toilet. It took me until just after Thanksgiving to resolve all of those issues, but I'm very comfy now, as are the dogs.

                                                    
                                                                        Puppies Happy in Front of the Fire

   I still have no internet to speak of, unless the stars are right. Tonight they are, but all weekend they were not. Alas, I will break down and get a landline (there's no phone, either, and no TeeVee) and pipe in DSL or Broadband or whatever ridiculously expensive type of soon-to-be-obsolete technology all of you are using at this time.
   So my best wishes to all of you until I get that hard wire, probably next week. All I can say is that it's nice to have the stars right for once. I'll have a nice post on that Rumford Fireplace of mine next time.
   Right now I'm going to post, because the internet around here is likely to crap out in the middle of wh