Today our Artifact Corner takes a look at the fireplaces built into the house.
www.kentdelordhouse.org/
Hi Everyone and welcome back to another artifact corner. Today we will be looking at a very important piece in our home, the fireplace. While most people today who have fireplaces in their homes use them as a secondary source of heat, our fireplaces were the main heating source for the home until it became a museum in the 1930s, when the electric baseboard heat was put in. The fireplaces in our home are no longer functional, but for the Delord family, they were a great comfort during the long winters in Plattsburgh. Let’s learn a bit more about the history of fireplaces.
A fireplace or even a hearth, is a structure made from stone, brick, or metal designed to contain a fire. Evidence of prehistoric man made fire exist on all five inhabited continents. The earliest form of indoor heating were fire pits in dwellings. These created heat, and allowed you to cook food, but they were not properly ventilated. This made early dwellings very smokey, and sometimes even toxic to be in. Fire pits continued into the Middle Ages, with a centrally located fire in the middle of the home. The smoke would vent through open windows or holes in the ceiling. This was a slight improvement, but homes were still quite smokey. Chimneys were invented in Northern Europe sometime in the late 11th or early 12th Century, and made heating homes and castles far more comfortable. The earliest surviving example of an English chimney is at the keep of Conisbrough Castle in Yorkshire, which dates from 1185. Most of the chimneys throughout Europe during the Middle Ages were built for castles or very large buildings. Chimneys were expensive to build, and remained the domain of the wealthy.
In the 17th Century, the average person had a chimney on their home. The downside was that those chimneys were often constructed of wood and/or clay. Fires ran rampant throughout cities all around Europe due to chimneys constructed of flammable materials. By 1719 England decided to outlaw the wooden and clay chimneys, and decreed that they must be rebuilt with brick or stone. Chimney’s in the United States were still being built with wood and clay up to the early 1800’s due to how much more affordable they were to construct. Thankfully, by the Victorian period, most chimney’s in the United States were built with brick, drastically reducing the risk of house res. Furnaces and boilers were invented in the late 18th & early 19th Centuries, but didn’t become commonplace in the average persons home until the early 20th Century.
Our fireplaces heated the home from the time it was rst constructed in 1797 up until the early 1930’s, and kept our family warm for over 130 years. They are beautifully constructed, but we don’t plan on lighting a fire in them any time soon. They are a reminder of how hard people had to work to stay warm in the winter, something I think we take for granted today. They are a lovely example of Georgian architecture and we are so lucky to have them as part of our museum. Thanks so much for stopping by.
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Sunny Morning by MusicLFiles
Free download: filmmusic.io/song/7813-sunny-...
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