sweasel.com

What a beauty and cosy too!

Isn’t life interesting? Didja ever imagine you’d end up a Brit with an inglenook?

Way cool, in a warm ‘n’ cozy kind of way.

That’s going on the monitor background!
~
Thanks!

as if in a mirror, darkly.

🙂

Might that be a weasel in the right glass panel of the stove in the black and white shot?
perhaps a ghostly image.

either way – definitely worthy of a screen saver.
How about recording a few minutes so we can put in on a loop with sound!

Where did they use to bake the bread?

Is the light from above natural, or wired in? It’s very bright and cheery, either way.

It’s cold and raining hard here today and I really, really, want to be sitting in front of that fire with a nice cuppa and a scone, ideally with my feet up and a cat on my lap.

Busy day so I am standing in for Her Stoatliness (while she prepares today’s epistle, in fact).

The light in the inglenook is from two low energy bulbs (Ptooey!) at the extreme ends behind the beam.

The bread oven is fascinating! When the chimney was built, we’ve always assumed, a chamber was created at the back right of the inglenook. The way it worked was that hot coals were placed in the chamber and the opening was closed (a wooden door, acting as a plug?). When it was deemed hot enough, the coals were raked out and the loaves were placed in the chamber using a very long handled shovel. The chamber was then sealed up again and the bread cooked by the residual heat.

Though these used to be very common in farm houses and cottages many, perhaps even most, have been lost over the years, so it’s very much a feature to cherish – especially if you have four paws and whiskers.

Every few months a cat decides he or she has never seen it before and explores it anew, decides there’s nothing worth hunting inside and emerges with cobwebby whiskers looking vaguely disappointed.

Thanks, Uncle B! Just think of the thousands of people over hundreds of years that baked their bread and roasted their meat and cooked their food in this fireplace. : )

Durned…in B&W there’s a face right outta a Hieronymus Bosch painting and in color Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in a fur hat is peering out.

Is Stoatie playing with us?