236 On the Construction of Kitchen 



Cottage chimneys, as they are now commonly con- 

 structed in most parts of Great Britain, have a very- 

 wide open fire-place, with a high mantel, and large 

 chimney-corners, in which the children frequently sit 

 on little stools, when in cold weather they hover round 

 the fire. These chimney-corners are very comfortable ; 

 and, except the whole room could be made equally so, 

 it would certainly be a pity to destroy them. But this, 

 I am persuaded, may easily be done : in the mean 

 time, much may be done to make cottages warm and 

 comfortable, merely by a few simple alterations in their 

 present fire-places. 



As the principal fault of these fire-places is the 

 enormous width of the throats of their chimneys, which 

 frequently occasions their smoking, and always gives 

 too free a passage for the warm air of the room to 

 escape up the chimney, a smaller fire-place may be 

 constructed in the midst of the larger one ; and the 

 little chimney of this small fire-place being carried up 

 perpendicularly in the middle of the large fire-place, 

 the large chimney-corners, without being destroyed, 

 may be arched over and closed in above, so as to leave 

 no passage in those parts for the escape of the warm 

 air of the room into the chimney, and from thence into 

 the atmosphere. 



The back of the old chimney may serve for a back to 

 the new fire-place, and the jambs of the new chimney 

 need not project forward beyond the back more than 

 12 or 15 inches ; so that the new chimney, and every 

 part of it, may be completely included within the 

 opening of the old fire-place. This is to be done in 

 order to preserve the old chimney-corners ; but in cases 

 where the opening of the old fire-place is not sufficiently 



