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The Chimney and Social Change In Medieval England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

LeRoy Dresbeck
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Extract

The recent debate concerning the problems of ecology has focused our attention upon the relationship between man and his physical surroundings. For the most part, historians have been interested in such questions tangentially. ignoring the basic issue of the effect of the environment upon people. The rising interest in the history of technology is based on the realization that political and military events, the history of ideas, and changing social patterns take place within the physical world. The effects of the environment can hardly be ignored if one is to understand fully historic change. One problem which illustrates the interrelationship between human and natural spheres in history is the development and use of the chimney and fireplace in medieval England. Hitherto it has not been fully realized how the new heating technology affected the spectrum of society, and changed the mores of medieval life.

Early medieval buildings heated by a central hearth required a high ceiling to prevent sparks from causing fires. Thus, whatever warming might come by sitting around the fire in a circle was partly offset by the upward dissipation of heat into the large, high-ceilinged room. Moreover, when such rooms had louvers at their peaks to vent smoke, they also let the heat escape — a waste of fuel, as well. With adoption of the fireplace and chimney in many homes of the twelfth century, the number of persons sitting next to the fire was reduced by nearly three quarters, thus diluting the functional capability of large rooms. The chimney fostered the small room. Though heat loss still occurred through the chimney, it was much less than the loss from the open hearth. Moreover, with a chimney the danger of fire from sparks lessened. Rooms could be built smaller and with much lower ceilings, heating the area more evenly. When precautions were taken to exclude draughts, a smaller room heated by a fireplace warmed fewer people but with a better heat distribution than the larger hall with a central hearth, where most of the heat rose toward the high ceiling, and of course, no person benefited from it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Spring 1971 , pp. 21 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1971

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References

NOTES

1 See my “The Chimney and Fireplace: A Study in Technological Development Primarily in England During the Middle Ages” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, (University of California, Los Angeles, 1971)Google Scholar, for the history and bibliography of the chimney.

2 London, British Museum Add. MS. 50000, Psalter, fol. 1v, Princeton Index, second half of the thirteenth century.

3 London, British Museum, Harley MS. 1526-27, II. fol. 28v, Princeton Index.

4 Ibid., I, fol. 18v, and I, fol. 19r.

5 See, for example, Oxford, Bodleian, Moralized Bible 27 O. b. fol. 194r, Princeton Index.

6 Britain, Great, Public Record Office, Calendar of Liberate Rolls (6 vols.; London, 1916 ff.), I, 126.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., pp. 375, 432.

8 Ibid., p. 311.

9 Ibid., p. 287.

10 Ibid., III, 248. Here the editors translate chimeneam as mantelpiece. However, the usual translation for this word is chimney, fireplace, or possibly, stove. See carninus in Latham, R. E., Revised Medieval Latin Word List from British and Irish Sources (Oxford, 1965). p. 65Google Scholar. The editors of the Liberate Rolls normally translate chimineam as chimney. See, for example. Vol. I, pp. 215, 315.

11 Exch. Accts. E. 473, 2, cited in Salzman, L. F., Building in England Down to 1540 (Oxford, 1967), p. 100Google Scholar. This was a double fireplace, the other connecting with the king's wardrobe; hence, the two hearths.

12 Davis, H. W. C., Mediaeval England (Oxford, 1924), p. 54Google Scholar. Salzman, , Building in England, p. 219Google Scholar, notes that a louver over a central hearth was constructed at Hampton Court in 1535. Gotch, J. Alfred, The Growth of the English House (London, 1909), p. 106Google Scholar, states that the central hearth was constructed at Richmond Palace under Henry VII, and at Deene Hall under Edward VI.

13 See, for example, the opinion of Turner, T. Hudson, Some Accounts of Domestic Architecture in England from the Conquest to the End of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1877), p. 13.Google Scholar

14 Liberate Rolls, I, 417.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 432. A demise of the manor of Heybridge of about 1337 mentions “unam cameram magnam scilicet solarium cum camino et capellam in eadem camera.” See Britain, Great, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Reports, Vol. IX, pt. 1, Report and Appendix (London, 1883), p. 37Google Scholar. This would indicate the use of the chimney in the solar as distinct from the hall, was also taking place on the social scale lower than the king.

16 Liberate Rolls, I, 435.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 251, 315, 316.

18 Ibid., p. 287.

19 Myers, A. R., The Household of Edward IV: The Black Book and the Oidinance of 1478 (Manchester, England, 1959), p. 14Google Scholar. For a discussion of the increased demand for privacy by the upper classes, see Mumford, Lewis, The City in History (New York, 1961), pp. 285, 383–384.Google Scholar

20 Myers, , Household of Edward IV, p. 237n.Google Scholar

21 Britain, Great, Public Record Office, Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (5 vols.; London, 1916–1962), IV, covering 1377-1388, p. 199.Google Scholar

22 Sabine, Ernest L., “Latrines and Cesspools of Medieva London,” Speculum, IX (1934), pp. 304, 313–314Google Scholar. Sabine cites evidence from 1324, 1342, and 1365-1366, that chimneys were built in latrines. The advantage of a latrine close to the chimney was not only its provision of warmth, but also meant that flues could be constructed within the chimney to carry away filth. Wood, Margaret, The English Mediaeval House (London, 1965), p. 383Google Scholar, notes that at Magdalene College, Cambridge, the monastic students had a “garderobe next to the laver and a fireplace was provided for the four occupants of the room.”

23 Liberate Rolls, IV, 424Google Scholar: in 1257, the king's chaplains had their own fireplace at Nottingham. Ibid., V, 276: the chancellor had his own fireplace. Ibid., III, 199: in 1248, knights had their own fireplace at Clarendon. Ibid., VI, 7, no. 57: for 1267 at Clarendon. Ibid., p. 139, no. 1219: in 1270 at Merleberge castle a room fifty feet by twenty-four feet was built with a fire-place in front of the castle tower for the king's knights.

24 Colvin, Howard Montagu. gen. ed., The History of the King's Works Vol. II, (London 1963 f), p. 1038Google Scholar. In 1256, Guy de Lezignon had a fireplace in his private chamber. Liberate Rolls, IV, 289.Google Scholar

25 Ed. by Henry W. Wells (New York, 1945), passus X, 11. 98-104, p. 115. This passage occurs only in the B. text of the poem. See also The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts, ed. by Skeat, Walter W. (Oxford, 1886), I, 292.Google Scholar

26 This is an illustration of the month of February from Les Tres Riches Heures de Due de Beri by Paul of Limburg and his brothers. See Panofsky, Erwin, Early Netherlandish Painting (2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass., 1958), II, fig. 89Google Scholar. Winter landscapes from this time on play an important role in European art.

27 ’Speculum Ecclesiae,” Opera, ed. by Brewer, J. S., Rolls Series, No. 21, Vol. IV (London, 1873), p. 250Google Scholar: “igniculum suum habent in caminis.” Executed in 1415, the Belles Heuers of Jean, Duke of Berry, contained a miniature of St. Bruno and the Grande Chartreuse (fol. 97v). This miniature shows the cloister surrounded by nineteen individual cells, each with a pink-tiled roof and chimney. See reproduction in Rorimer, James, ed., The Belles Heuers of Jean, Duke of Berry, Prince of France (New York, 1958), pl. 18.Google Scholar

28 See Mortet, Victor and Deschamps, Paul, Recueil de textes relatifs à l'histoire de l'architecture (Paris, 1929), I, 247Google Scholar. A fireplace, undated, was built for lay guests in the gatehouse of Abingdon Abbey. See Dickinson, J. C., Monastic Life in Medieval England (London, 1961), p. 13.Google Scholar

29 Thomas of Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. by Riley, Henry Thomas, Rolls Series, No. 28, Vol. IV, Pts. 1, 2 (London, 1867), p. 482.Google Scholar

30 Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, ed. by Skeat, Walter W., Early English Text Society, orig. ser., No. 30 (London, 1867)Google Scholar, on the cloister: “… And houses full noble, chambers wip chymneyes” (1. 208); and on a friar: “his chambre to holden wip chymene & chapell” (11. 582-583).

31 Liberate Rolls, I, 350.Google Scholar

32 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Reports, pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

33 Thomas of Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, p. 314.

34 London, British Museum, Royal MS. 2B., VII, fol. 72v, reproduced in Rickert, Edith, ed., Chaucer's World (New York 1962), foll. p. 90Google Scholar. A man is shown sitting on his bed, and a servant is handing him his hose. Behind the servant there is a fire in a small hooded fireplace. The smoke is shown, exhausting through a short flue above the roof line. Ibid., p. 80. quotes a text of 1447, in which the duty of the chamberlain includes care of the fire and warming the lord's linen “at a clear fire, not smoky if (the weather) be cold or freezing.”

35 Oxford, Bodleian, MS. Douce 6, fols. 160v-161. This calendar scene is reproduced in Randall, Lilian M., Images ın the Margins of Gothic Manucripts (Berkeley, 1966), pl. 404.Google Scholar

36 City in History, p. 286. Mumford appears to be unduly pessimistic about love chilled by the medieval winter. He says it was not until the Baroque Period that the shift of “love making from a seasonal to a year-round occupation” took place, in great part because of heated rooms. “In a heated room, the body need not cower under a blanket: visual erethism added to the effect of tactile stimuli: the pleasure of the naked body, symbolized by Titian and Rubens and Fragonard, was part of that dilation of the senses which accompanied the more generous dietary, the freer use of wines and strong liquors, the more extravagant dresses and perfumes of the period” (p. 384). Mumford is correct in one respect. In the scene above sheets and blankets were used, an atavistic, if not a more civilized custom.

37 Ibid., p. 286.

38 Lambrick, Gabrielle, “Abingdon Abbey Administration,” Journal of Eccelesiastical History, XVII (1966), p. 176.Google Scholar

39 Henry III ordered the chancellor's fireplace at Guldeford to be reconstructed. Liberate Rolls, IV, 342.

40 “Et in elemosinaria castri Merleberge prostuenda et alia bona ibidem cum quodam camino faciendo …“ Cannon, Henry Lewin, The Great Roll of the Pipe For the Twenty Sixth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Third (New Haven, 1918) p. 175Google Scholar. Consult also Liberate Rolls, II, 58. Four years later, Henry built a chimney in the almonry at Clarendon. Liberate Rolls, III, 67.Google Scholar

41 Clay, Rotha Mary, The Mediaeval Hospitals of England (London, 1966), p. 120Google Scholar. The combination of heat and privacy went hand in hand, and evidently were to be applied to all social levels. Clay notes that the chimney was a new feature for these people, and produced a change in their life patterns. Evidently this was a popular transformation, since other almshouses also adopted the chimney. For example, al Ludlow the charity house had thirty-three rooms with a chimney in each. A considerable variation in the style and shape of these chimneys is also mentioned by Clay in the houses at St. Cross and St. John in Lichfield.

42 In the year 1377, “… quam in duobus caminis de piastre uno scilicet subtus in camera Gaolatoris et celio desuper in parte predicta domus huius . .” Exch., K. R. Accts. 598, 24, quoted in Salzman, , Building in England, p. 453Google Scholar. In 1492 Margarete Odeham of Bury left a legacy to purchase wood for prisoners at Bury, “euery weke vij fagotes of woode from Hulowmesse vnto Eaister yearly.” See Wills and Inventories from the Registers of the Commissary of Bury St. Edmund's and the Archdeacon of Sudbury, Camden Society Publications, 1st ser., Vol XLIX (London, 1850), p. 77Google Scholar. On heating in prisons consult also Pugh, Ralph, Imprisonment in Medieval England (Cambridge, England, 1968), pp. 327, 361.Google Scholar

43 Liberate Rolls, III, 27.Google Scholar

44 Bishop Hatfield's Survey ed. by Greenwell, William, Surtees Society Publications, Vol. XXXII (Durham, England, 1857), p. 88.Google Scholar

45 Emden, Alfred, An Oxford Hall in Medieval Times: Being the early history of St. Edmund Hall (Oxford, 1968), pp. 35, 47, 5Google Scholar7. He cites a manuscript, Twyne MS. xxiii, fol. 100, for this reference. Many of the halls at Oxford derived their names from distinctive architectural features or positions. Corner Hall (Aula Angularis), Glazen Hall (Aula Vitrea), and “Chymeney halle.” From the evidence cited by Emden, there appear to have been two halls called Chymney, one on Cheyne Lane, and the other on Hare-hall Lane.

46 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Reports, p. 20Google Scholar: “deus sales ove chimynees, botelerie, pantrie et quisine. …”

47 Ibid., p. 12.

4 Ibid.: “les Flandrysch tyles et plaster pour lez mantelschides des avauntditz chemeneyes.”

49 See Faulkner, P. A., “Medieval Undercrofts and Town Houses,” The Archaeological Journal, CXXIII (1966), p. 131Google Scholar, who surmises that such a shop was used in a luxury trade, such as silk, where goods “could be displayed before exalted customers seated before the fire.” Faulkner also points out that there may be lower and upper shops in the same building. Such a shopping complex as described above can be seen in a French miniature, the Pontificate Senonense, painted between 1395 and 1426, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. lat. 962, fol. 264r, and is reproduced in Evans, Joan, ed., Flowering of the Middle Ages, (London, 1966), p. 263, pl. 52Google Scholar. This scene shows the Bishop of Paris blessing the Lendit Fair. Six tents and seventeen permanent buildings are shown. Of the latter, five have chimneys, one of which is shown with smoke issuing from it. A French minature of the middle of the fifteenth century also shows shops in a town scene. These are open booth-like structures on the ground level, with large counters and no windows. On the second story chimneys appear where the merchants and, perhaps, artisans lived and worked. See Goetz, Walteret al., Propyläen Welt Geschichte, Vol. IV: Das Zeitalter der Gotik und Renaissance, 1250-1500 (Berlin, 1932), p. 289.Google Scholar

50 London Bridge Estate Deeds, quoted in Rickert, , Chaucer's World, p. 8Google Scholar. In 1552, the hotel of the Chamber of Accounts in the courtyard of the Palace in Paris had a very large chimney extending above the gabled roof. This can be seen in a woodcut, Cosmographie Universelle of Munster, an engraving of which appears in Lacroix, Paul, France in the Middle Ages (New York, 1963), p. 320, fig. 279.Google Scholar