We didn?t start the fire Welcome back to Period Dramas, a weekly column that alternates between rounding up historic homes on the market and answering questions we?ve always had about older structures.
Editor's Note: This post was originally published in February 2017 and has been updated with the most recent information.
We?ve reached that time of the year when our Instagram feeds will soon be filled with cozy fireside images rather than sunny beach selfies.
While today fireplaces are more commonly the centerpiece of a hygge-decor dream, it was only a couple hundred years ago that they were the central source of heat in a house.
In many of these houses, which primarily date from the 18th and early-19th centuries, it?s not uncommon to find a large, deep fireplace with an oven off to the side. These sorts of fireplaces are referred to as ?cooking fireplaces? and, as their name suggests, identify the main room food was prepared in when the house was first built. It might be tempting to label the room a ?kitchen,? but modern kitchens only formed over the last hundred years. These early rooms were more multipurpose spaces, used for living, dining, and sleeping, in addition to cooking.
As technologies advanced?and coal and gas stoves offered more efficient and controllable means of heating a house and preparing food?cooking in a fireplace became obsolete. Sometimes, the drafty fireplaces were entirely blocked up and plastered over, but thankfully for us old-house lovers, ...