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By GERALD S. HAWKINS
Kappahannock News Contributing Writer
We heat our farmhouse, upstairs and down, with a single fireplace. That may sound unusual, but it is (or was) the traditional English way.
At the time of King Arthur the manor house was entirely open-plan, heated by a log fire burning on a hearth in the middle of the room, with a hole in the roof for the smoke. Later, someone thought of making a chimney of wTood and stone to help the smoke get out. Finally the famous scientist Isaac Newton invented the smokeshelf — a ledge inside the chimney Just behind the damper — and this created a circulation of cold air within the flue which stopped the effects of downdraft.
From that point on the Englishman’s country home became his castle. The fireplace with its added oven was a conservation area, a source of hot water, a rotisserie, a bakery and a central heating unit all in one.
Our fireplace is a mass of masonry built in the middle of the house, hollow inside with more than a thousand coral-colored bricks. Because it is hollow the trapped air is heated at the sides and at the back of the fireplace. The thousand bricks also store a lot of the heat. The chimney itself is a long giraffe-like affair that stretches up inside the stairwell to poke through the center of the roof. of the chimney, and went through its M2 imitations of other birds. Those bird songs echoed down into the living room like an Audubon tape cassette. That mockingbird probably enjoyed the warm air rising from the red embers in the fireplace. Even when there was a bit of smoke rising, it stayed in place, singing.
Occasionally the more adventurous type of bird has come right down the chimney into the house. Julia likes to play a folk harp, which involves sitting by the hearth on a small stool with the harp between her knees and her hands on the strings. Overhead the ceiling is rustic, with exposed wood beams and joists. As she played one afternoon, a bird suddenly swooped down from a hiding place in the beams, divebombed the harp and settled on the window ledge, ruffled but perky.
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