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coal finally superseded turf, and, as a necessary consequence, open 

 fire places gave place to grates. The old chimneys had no flues, 

 and were fiinnel-shaped, being very wide at the bottom and 

 gradually contracting to the top, where there was an aperture of 

 the size of an ordinary chimney, through which the smoke escaped. 

 In these open chimneys hams, legs of beef, flitches of bacon, and 

 whole carcases of mutton were hung to dry for winter consumption. 

 Mr. Clark, in his Survey of the Lakes, mentions having seen as 

 many as seven carcases of mutton hanging in one chimney in 

 Borrowdale, and was told that some chimneys in the vale contained 

 more. Very few of these old-fashioned chimneys are now to be 

 found in the country. The staircase was made of stone, and the 

 space above was sometimes undivided, and seldom made into 

 more than two rooms, which were called lofts, and used as the 

 sleeping apartments. They were unceiled, and open to the roof, 

 which was so rudely constructed that light could often be seen 

 through the chinks ; and when a driving snowstorm came, it was 

 no uncommon thing for the people in bed to have a covering of 

 several inches of snow over the bed-clothes. Most of the old 

 buildings had a porch before the outer door, and the door was 

 made of massive oak, two planks thick, and fastened together with 

 wooden pins, which were put in parallel rows, about three or four 

 inches apart, and left projecting about three-quarters of an inch on 

 the outside. The "freshwood," or threshold, was the lower side 

 of the wooden frame which contained the door. It stood four or 

 five inches high, and people going in or out were obliged to step 

 over it. Mr. Clark tells us that there was a degree of sanctity 

 attached to the threshold of a door, and certain charms were, in 

 his time, remembered, which had their effect only in that place. 

 A good specimen of a door of this kind may be seen at the old 

 farm house at Armboth. The planks of which it is made are 

 fastened together with six hundred and thirty-one of the above- 

 mentioned oaken pegs. In these busy times, we could make a 

 dozen doors in the time it took our ancestors to make the six 

 hundred and thirty-one oaken pegs, 



The food of the dalesmen was simple, being confined almost 



