Information and restoration of Georgian ‘Open’ type cooking ranges.
We completed the restoration and installation of the huge Gold Medal Eagle Range at Hinton House a while ago now but we were asked back to site to attend to the multitude of grates in the bedrooms and living spaces of the manor. Below are a few of the nicer examples we restored for the client including a lovely circa 1800 Coalbrookdale forest pattern hob grate, a regency engraved and polish steel trim and a collection of matching late 19th century register grates.
I was up at Coalbrookdale again recently to see some of the sites that I didn’t have time for on my last visit. First on the list was the Darby houses. Abraham Darby I’s house wasn’t open to due to a lack of volunteers but his sons house was. In the kitchen was this fantastic perpetual oven, roasting grate and hotplate.
I got another restoration out last week. This one was a big project. Although it appears to be simply in its construction there was a lot of damage and required several major new castings. Since it is such an early example (circa 1820) the castings are all very thick and large. The boiler and oven are both single castings which is a hell of an acheivement for the period.
It is now back home and awaiting to be reinstalled in a newly restored scullery.
I was contacted by a company restoring a very prestigious house in Bristol that was built between 1780 and 1820. Much of the range appears to be in reasonable condition but the top plate has suffered from a long working life along with the hot plates. As much of the original range will be kept as possible but section that have suffered too badly will be renewed. These news parts will be dated and labelled to add to the chronology of the range whilst maintaining it in working order.
Now here is something that doesn’t come up very often at all. It’s a beautifully cast early ‘open’ range, called such because the firebox was open rather than the fully enclosed ranges produced later in the century. This range bridges the gap between the 18th century open down hearth ranges and the later closed type. Early cooking was preformed in a wrought iron grate, usually with adjustable cheeks with various ancillary parts like a chimney crane, spits and smoke jacks and spit jacks etc to turn them.
Here, various features of the earlier method have been retained like the adjustable cheek (used to alter the size of the fire) and chimney crane. However, the fire now features an oven and hot plates for cooking and the whole is cast into a range with fantastic classical detailing. The cheek is moved via a rack that is wound with a crank handle engaged in a socket to the bottom left of the firebox- a great detail!
I have loosely mocked this range up but will be restoring it at some point early next year unless otherwise requested. Most likely dating from around 1830-1840.
Well it’s been a really busy few weeks here. We’ve been up and down the country working, buying and selling and I’m now back at the workshop to catch up with the on going work here.
I went to take a look at two Shepherds huts yesterday with a mind to restoring them for the owner of the estate where they still are. One is in reasonable nick but the other is a real project.
The Ideal Domestic boiler is off up to London for its new life on a boat on the Thames. I’ve been busy making a log store/ base for it to stand on which should look very smart and raise boiler to a more convenient height for cooking etc.
I’ve got three new acquisitions this week alone. Firstly a very nice Coalbrookdale open range that I just couldn’t pass up. Sadly I can’t make out the digits on the RD mark but I suspect it is circa 1860 and certainly no later than 1868.
Next is a Larbert portable range, this is probably the most desirable of the portable ranges and they don’t come up very often. It’s in reasonable nick but will certainly take more than a bit of work to get it up to scratch again!
Lastly is a very nice early open range. This type of range predate any dating marks so it is hard to know when they were cast. The earliest example that I have restored was in Bristol and dated from 1813. This one is likely to be a bit later but is almost certainly pre 1840s.
