Fashioned a Spit Out of Branches

[The post-obit comes from "The Hearth and Its Implements," the third chapter of Gertrude Jekyll'south Old English Household Life (1925), some of the material of which previously appeared in her 1904 volume, Old West Surrey. The photographs and drawings are probably all hers. GPL scanned and formatted text and images, added headings, and cut and rearranged some portions of the text, moving, for example, the section on cooking pots earlier in the text hither than in the original.].

Fireplace Hangers

Wooden "Crochan" from the Hebrides. [Click on thumbnail for larger image.]

WHEN wood was the only fuel, except peat, in land districts, the broad "downward" hearth was normally used both for cooking and warming. It was every bit suitable where, in some remote moorland places, in that location was no truthful peat for the alternative fuel — parings of peaty soils containing tufts of heath and gorse. In the simplest cottages the usual cooking utensil was the three-legged atomic number 26 pot. Information technology could either stand in the hot ashes on its three short legs or hang by the swinging handle, the chimney was the wooden chimney bar, stretching across, the ends let into the masonry. It was of oak, or preferably, of chestnut; in section higher than wide and with the upper edge rounded. Over this passed the curved tiptop end of the hanger, an iron bar with a flat sail-atomic number 26 ratchet attachment looking like a fibroid saw. The lowest end of the upright had either a closed loop or a knob, from which hung the hook that caught i of the teeth of the ratchet. The hanger could thus exist set either high or low, co-ordinate to the liveliness of the fire or the degree of heat required for the cooking. The almost primitive course of hanger was the wooden "crochan," past which the pot, slung from above past a hazel rope, hung over the fire (at right).

Some of the older hangers take an ornament at the top, usually a fleur-de-lys, or information technology might be a kind of lance head, or but a close roll of the terminate of the iron that continued the upper part of the ratchet with the upright bar (see "A" below). A rare example of a highly ornamented hanger is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The loop that catches in the ratchet is decorated with elaborate gyre work and the lower role is pierced through, showing a silhouette of the smith at work, with some of his tools to a higher place ("C" below).

Chimney and Pot Cranes

Two Cranes, one from Pembrokeshire, the other from Glamorganshire.

In farms and the improve class of houses something more the elementary hanger was wanted. The burn was large and wide spread then that one point or another of its expanse might be the more convenient place for the cooking pot. Some contrivance for coming together this alternative was by the chimney crane or pot crane; this was of two forms, one in which the horizontal bar was simply supported past a diagonal stay and the height of the pot adjusted by a short hanger at any point along the bar, and the other in which there are two movements of the crane itself; one to swing forward and back, and the other for raising or lowering the hook that holds the pot or kettle. In both forms the main vertical iron, the backbone of the whole concern, is so held at top and bottom that it can swing frontward like a gate. The bottom finish is commonly fitted into a slice of hard rock and the top into a loop in an atomic number 26 balk congenital into the wall. At a certain distance along the horizontal arm a short iron strap suspends a lever or handle that has a hanging hook at the burn end, while the handle finish rests nether any one of the projecting buttons on the quadrant that is fixed near the upright, and thus the pot is held at any superlative in a higher place the burn down. These cranes, made during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, testify a bully diversity of ornament. The master part of the construction was determined by the necessities of its use, and the smith then exercised his own powers of invention, taste and skill in various methods of enrichment. Sometimes it is only in the line or play of the different straps and stays; which, after doing their constructional work, were fatigued out into curls or volutes with more or less closed ends, or it may be some ornamental twists of the square sectioned iron bar, or a little spray of leaf and flower, or even a whole tree with leafy branches and ringlet tendrils.

Firedogs, Spits, and Cup-dogs

Left: Cottage Fire-dogs. Correct: Loving cup-dog for warming drinks.

A simple class of iron firedog was in use in every cottage, more often than not of low shape so equally not to interfere with the swinging pot; the upright front existence but high plenty to stop a log of reasonable thickness from rolling out forwards; and in that location were two loose atomic number 26 bars that could be adapted on the dogs so as to hold a cooking pot. Simply in some farmhouses, and fifty-fifty cottages, there were the tall-fronted cup dogs, with the tops framed in such a way as to hold a mug of hot drink.

In these and in many other forms of tall-fronted dogs there was often an organization for supporting a spit. The illustration of the basket or cardle sspit immediately to a higher place shows one with movable loops; these would bring the spit to the front of the dogs. The loops or hooks were more than ofttimes and more conveniently fixed to the back of the dogs, nearer to the fire. Information technology was the pride of the skilful housewife to go along her spits vivid, and they showed finely when displayed in the spitrack over the front of the fireplace. These spitracks were sometimes quite plain, just usually with the fronts of tlie projections handsomely moulded. Sometimes the spit was worked by a smoke-jack, a piece of mechanism whose power was derived from the draught in the chimney. In this instance the spit had a circular disk at one finish, the edge grooved to take the chain that continued it with the jack.

In some quondam spits this round wheel was larger, pointing to its having been used in the older days when turnspit dogs were the motive power. From the spit, a chain or cord was conveyed to the domestic dog wheel stock-still at some convenient height confronting the wall of the kitchen. The domestic dog worked inside the bike, whose floor had transverse battens for his foothold. They were small-scale, short legged, long bodied dogs, something the shape of a dachshund.

Thomas Rowlandson, A Dog Turnspit in a Kitchen at Newcastle Emlyn, South Wales.

Nowadays we roast more conveniently by hanging the articulation vertically to the clockwork jack ; this also is meliorate suited to the narrow shape of our coal fires. But in the old days, when the fire was on the hearth and was big and broad shaped to take a large piece of meat, there was no other way of roasting than the horizontal. For a heavy piece of meat at that place were two usual forms of spit; one with 2 prongs which held information technology firm and the other, called a basket or cradle spit, in which the meat was enclosed, and held past a number of thin iron confined (see below). This was specially user-friendly for cooking a tender viand like a sucking sus scrofa, in whose example it was desirable to avoid piercing the meat and so letting out the succulent juices.

Left: Basket or Cradle Spit. Correct: Pronged Roasting Spit. Note the pulleys at the left of each, which orginally connected to a smoke jack, a mechansm that rotated the cooking meat — an early version of a rotisserie.

Many a pair of handsome old firedogs that had been in manorial houses found their way into farmhouses and cottages when fe firegrates came into utilise in the kitchens of houses of the better class. Some of them, of pure Gothic design, are of great antiquity. They might frequently be found fifty years ago in Surrey and Sussex, when attendance at farm sales in remote state places gave an opportunity of collecting many interesting relics of the older days.

Cooking Pots

The master cooking utensil was the iron pot, still made and now largely exported to some half-savage peoples. It would either swing from the claw of a hanger or stand downwardly in the ashes. There were too skillets of brass or statuary which appear to have been bandage in one piece. They were thick and heavy and look as if they would wear and endure for always. In fact, a great many more of these would have been still in existence merely that in Jacobean times a quantity were called in and melted downwardly for statuary coinage. A afterward form of skillet was of wrought contumely, much thinner. This kind had a projecting rim, the brass being brought over a wired border, and they dropped into iron holders on 3 legs. Big contumely cauldrons were used for heating milk in cheesemaking. Iron trivets, on which whatsoever cooking pot could be stood, or anything placed to keep warm, were in many skilful patterns. Frying pans had the handles very long, sometimes as much as three and half feet; the necessity of this volition be seen when the size of the wood fire and the distance for the condolement of the operator are considered.

Various skillets. This kind of cookware has legs to raise it above the flooring of the fireplace and dress-down.

There were also earthen cooking pots ; pipkins with handles, in stoneware with a tedious coat, both inside and out, and in dissimilar kinds of earthenware; some all glazed, and others, of the commonest kind, of the ordinary redware, glazed inside simply. They were used either seated in the hot ashes or raised on trivets. Cakes and minor loaves were baked in the ashes under a redware pot turned upside down. The girdle, all the same much used in the northward and occasionally all over England, is of great antiquity; it can either hang to a hanger or stand up on a trivet.

Pipkins in stoneware and glazed earthenware.

Tongs, Burn Shovels, and Other Cooking Implements

The tongs and fire shovels of the older times were of a fine simple shape, in happy contrast to the implements of the aforementioned name now to be found in shops, for the most office of bad design or overloaded with useless, so-called ornament. The reason is not far to seek, for the old tongs were made for actual use by the nearest smith, while the modern thing is one of thousands of the same, out of the ironmonger's pattern book. Really beautiful were some of the old brand tongs, small things to be held in i hand for picking up a make and blowing it into flame for lighting a piping or a rushlight.

Toaster and potato rack.

Several forms of toasting implements were in use with the downwardly fire; some quite depression for the cottage for toasting bacon or bread. They stood on three short legs — 2 of them forward, under the actual toaster, and 1 half-way back, under the handle. The head with its two hoops was on a loose rivet and could be twisted a fiddling mode to i side or the other. The implement that is shown with the toaster is for raking hot potatoes out of the ashes. There were larger and more elaborate toasters in meliorate houses, with tripod legs supporting an upright to which the actual toasting I'ork was fixed. In both the examples shown in Fig. 56 the toasting function slides up and down the standard and also revolves upon information technology, while information technology is kept in uny position that may be desired by the pressure level of a bound. In the one on the right paw in that location is another motility, for the horizontal fork pulls astern and forward.

Left: Iii Idlebacks.

Right: A Tea kettle hanging on an Idleback attached to an adaptable metal hanger.

A favourite device for tipping a kettle without taking it off the fire was the idleback or lazyback (Figs. 61-two). It hung on the hanger and it will be seen from tlie illustration how the act of pulling downwardly the handle will tip the kettle. The hook nearest the spout has a spring clip that keeps the front of the kettle handle downwardly when it is tipped for pouring. The old smith who forged it could not resist the suggestion of snake-like class in the handle of the tipper, for he finished off the terminate in a little snake's head. If it is noticed that in the picture the kettle does not hang level, it is because it is the way information technology takes of itself later being tipped.

A piece of old waggon tire, stood on border, was unremarkably used in cottages as a fender, and a very handy fender it makes; standing four inches loftier and about twenty inches long and with a pleasant curve, it was a not bad manner of keeping the ashes of the forepart of the fire in place.

Bellows

Bellows have been in utilize for all time, but from their construction of wood and leather and from the need of their constant employment they had necessarily a rather short lifetime, and examples of those in mutual use dating farther back than a hundred and 50 years are rare, though there are much older specimens in museums of a highly ornamental kind, in which both wooden faces were richly carved. The oldest nosotros know of for ordinary household use had much longer handles and shorter bodies than the subsequently patterns. A skilful kind of the belatedly eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had the turned body of a. nighttime hardwood, every bit shown in 1 of the examples illustrated. This had a nicely formed brass nozzle, and was altogether a shapely article. The ordinary kitchen bellows with elm body that is nevertheless to be had follows this, though on coarser lines.

Left: Traditional Bellows. Right: A Nineteenth-century mechanical bellows. [Click on thumbnail for larger paradigm.]

An ingenious grade of bellows, giving a continuous blast, was in use in the early years of the nineteenth century. Information technology has a drum-shaped torso narrowing into a foursquare channel that ends in a brass nozzle. Within the drum is a wheel with floats. Outside there is an arrangement of two wheels with driving bands, the larger with a handle, which turn the wheel inside, the multiplied ability making a steady draught. In that location is an old saying among cottage folk in Sussex descriptive of some state of affairs that is full of difficulty or almost hopeless: "It is a case of greenish wood and no bellows."

Bibliography

Jekyll, Gertrude One-time English language Household Life: Some Account of Cottage Objects and Land Folk. London: B. T. Batsford, 1925.

Jekyll, Gertrude Old West Surrey: Some Notes and Memories. London: Longmans, Green, & Co, 1904.

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3 February 2009

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