The Smoking Pot

It is not sad, geeky or anything compulsive  but I regularly count chimney pots.
It is something I have actually been trained to do in my job and not a working day usually goes by without me staring up above roof height to observe and account for the number, type, style and apparent condition of the objects, not always traditional clay pots, which are sat upon the flaunching and corbelled brickwork of a chimney stack.

Most houses built well into the 1950's relied upon internal fireplaces for room heating, hot water, cooking and general amenity such as laundry. In the course of my work I can assess what has gone on structurallly in a property by backtracking from the number of external pots down through the course of chimney breasts through the house and matching these up with what remains of the original hearths.

The Readers Digest Book of Home Improvements is to blame for the upsurge in disastrous Do-It-Yourself projects over the last 40 years and after sledge-hammering out supporting walls (not helped by that nearly educated Rita), boarding over beautiful panelled internal doors and ripping out anything remotely antiquated and characterful a popular candidate for removal through severance has been the chimney breast.

Not an easy task on many fronts. Bedroom fireplaces, once quaint with a cast iron surround, grate and mantelpiece soon fell out of favour with the demise of live-in labouring domestic staff and the emergence of electric blankets, heavy duck down quilts and central heating. The actual archived statistic for fatalities from a hot coal bursting out of a bedroom hearth in the wee small hours would make for interesting if rather morbid reading. Such redundant features can be dismantled but generating surprisingly large volumes of mansonry rubble, dirt, grime, soot and other chemical residues accumulated in the flue from many decades of the burning of fossil fuels. It would be logical to simultaneously remove the corresponding ground floor breast with some economies of scale and physical effort.

What my experience shows however is that the lower section often goes first out into the skip, the back garden or simply stashed under the floorboards and with no subsequent regard for any support for what can be a tangible tonnage of brickwork left suspended just within the first floor joist level. Some years after this work and following some enjoyment of a slightly wider reception room the small rectangle of plasterboard inserted in the hole vacated by the masonry starts to develop a hairline crack to its perfect outline as an indication that the unrestrained structure above is causing some problems.

Options are available but all are costly and again labour intensive. The first floor chimney breast can be removed in the same process all over again but with more effort required to remove further tonnage from the property, either in a human chain of buckets full of rubble up and down the stairs and leaving a mucky and persistent trail through the house, or thrown out of the window into a flower bed. Of course the same problem is repeated as the residual breast is invariably through the roof void on the basis that it is out of sight and out of mind. I have seen some very sagging ceilings at bedroom level and in some cases this has been a cause for concern particularly if directly over a childs bed or an infants cot.

If you, as owner of an older house are lucky enough to have retained one or more fireplaces then there can be potential for these to be restored to working use. Coal fires have had a bit of a resurgence in recent years on a wave of part nostalgic and part energy saving feelings. I do fear for the woodlands and roadside coppices of this country with the tremendous revival of log burning stoves and have more than on a few occasions witnessed whole families scavenging amongst plantations of trees and emerging with armfuls of timber. There also appears to be , at face value, an increase in the kind offers of neighbours to help clear those large overpowering species of broadleaved trees from gardens but it is surprising how many charitable endeavours involve a chainsaw and the rapid removal of logs and boughs off site.

Many of the log burners are quite a feature but would be more efficient as red-wine warmers than actual room heaters because of the 60% loss of the hot air directly up the flue. Old fireplaces and flues are often beyond reasonable use because of the likelihood of loose bricks, bird nests, bird carcasses and soot residues somewhere far inside the course between hearth and pot.The opening up of a longstanding hearth, just up the road from my house, revealed the remains of a snake- either a native in some form of hibernation or a former pet that made a break for freedom. The services of a traditional sweep, if not attending weddings on a full time basis, are back in demand and there is a certain thrill in the thrusting emergence of  a brush out of the pot and the clatter of the contents of the flue being collected in the grate and the dust sheet of the room below.

We have one coal fire left out of a total of 6 from when the house was built in the 1920's. The others are either venting out toxic gas fire fumes or have been blocked up and ventilated. The operational fire is brought into use in the weeks up to and after Christmas. It is an expensive luxury as opposed to its original basic necessity. I purchase a bag of washed and sorted coal or curiously shaped nuggets of man made moulded substances from the forecourt of the petrol station , an almost gift wrapped string bag of beautiful logs and a plastic shrink wrapped packet of kindling from Sainsbury Homebase for a total cost of around £15. This will do about two fires at an average cost well above, probably, having the gas fired central heating on at 30 degrees for the commensurate period. It is nice though. Our Christmas Eve would not be the same without the children, or almost the young adults now, releasing their letters to Santa into the warm rising air with a wish and a prayer. My subsequent duty over the next few Festive Days is to check the empty hearth for the return, on the cold heavy air of any bits of the notes and for these to be whisked away in the interests of maintaining the magic of the season.

The flue is periodically swept and checked but only because one of the houses opposite had a very spectacular but devastating chimney fire culminating in the local brigade clambering up the roof and emptying half a reservoir of hose-delivered water into the pot. The liquid boiled and was hissing and steaming when we next saw it pouring out through the front door and almost reaching its source in the Fire Tender as though in a perpetual cycle.

We do still get some soot falls, for example, following the permeation of heavy rain at pot level or a particularly violent vertical gust of wind and for some days the house does have a smell reminiscent of a holiday cottage. Those currently viewing our house, which is up for sale, go a bit dewey eyed and romantic when they see the open hearth and I do nothing to dampen their enthusiasm for this great and convenient amenity of our time.