Since the beginning of time humans have used fire to cook their food and heat their homes.
Fireplaces served as the central meeting place of the home, where people could share food
and stories of the day's events, as well as keep warm.
Old English fireplaces were really not that different from fireplaces of the Dark Ages. In
the kitchen you would find one massive fireplace of the walk-in variety, where food was
cooked and also where, at any given time of the day, people of the household would gather
for warmth.
Every main room would have its own large fireplace. Traditionally, houses were built slowly
over a period of months or years. At first, a new home would consist of one large room with
a large fireplace.
This main fireplace would be placed against one wall and the smoke, as well as much of the
heat, would be vented up and outside via a flue and chimney. Next, a second room mirroring
the first would be built. In this second room there would be another large fireplace. The
flues would merge together and be vented out of one chimney usually.
Next there would be the addition of another room or two that were heated by radiating heat
off of the first two rooms. Finally, a low second storey would be built and each of these
rooms would have smaller fireplaces whose flues would be feed into the main flues already in
place.
The style and structure of the traditional fireplace didn't really change much until the
1700s. With all the masonry involved and the way that fireplaces were built into homes, it's
easy to see why little experimentation or innovation of the fireplace was accomplished.
In the 1700s, people began to experiment with fireplace design somewhat. It became clear
that to have better heat distribution and efficiency, the wood or coals would have to be
exposed to more of the room, instead of the heat going directly up and out the chimney.
There were many innovations involving these design ideas. But soon, the traditional
fireplace would be replaced by the stove. In the mid 1700s Ben Franklin designed and
patented the first wood or coal burning stove that utilized many of the attributes that
people had begun to understand in order to increase fuel efficiency.
The wood or coal burning stove made use of various vents in order to bring in optimal
amounts of oxygen, as well as to vent only the minimum amount of heated air. By the end of
the 1700s the traditional fireplace was considered to be old fashioned in terms of household
heating, and outright archaic when it came to cooking heat.
Over time, fireplaces have become smaller and more compact. Where the mantle was originally
merely another structural component, as early as the 1700s the mantel had changed to be more
of an aesthetic aspect, a shelf and a place to put a family portrait or mirror.
Today, people continue to fixate on the aesthetics of mantels and other eye catching aspects
of the fireplace. There are prefab fireplaces and electric or gas powered fireplaces along
with the more traditional fireplace designs.
