The search for a new Stone fireplace
So now we’d got back to where the original stone fireplace used to be: Some pieces of limestone where evident fixed to the brickwork on the sides of the chimney breast and on one side, in the hearth there was a thin square of what could only be the bottom of the leg of a stone fire surround. We asked our farmer pal, but he had no recollection of any stone fireplace having been there, and the appearance of the remaining pieces suggested it had been removed, for whatever reason, many years before he was born.
We had sizes though, as it was clear where the fireplace had stood and the height of the lintol. We now had to find a replacement. It was a long a very hard search: We must have visited every reclamation yard in the country, but nowhere could we find what we wanted. Sadly this was before the days of the internet, the advent of which has made such searches so much easier. We had to do miles of travel and trudging round muddy yards, made all the worse, because despite our efforts we found nothing!
The companies making ‘new’ fireplaces did not cater for this market. They just produced poor imitation items, that were not of the quality or size that this wonderful house deserved, so after much deliberation, we decided to make our own. This involved many more miles of exploration, as we visited 100s of great houses to get an idea of what elements we needed to include in fireplace for a house of this period.
Certainly it needed to be large (around 6 feet wide and 4′ 6″ high) it also needed to be substantial. No thin, ’stick on’ slips of stone for this house, it needed to be deep (and very heavy!) stone blocks as they were when they were originally made. We knew it would make production expensive and difficult, but we did not want to compromise.