1807.] 
appears to notice the chimnies as con- 
fined to the chambers of the rich: 
** Now hath eche ryche a rule to eaten by 
himselie, 
Ina privy parler for poor men sake, 
Or in chamber with a chimney and leave the 
chief halte.”’ 
But the introduction of these funnels 
was an innovation which does not seem 
to have been generally approved ; since 
we do not find them exhibited in the il- 
Juminations of our ancient manuscripts 
till about the close of the fifteenth cen- 
se ‘One or two are seen in the View 
of London, of the time of Henry the Se- 
venth, engraved in Mr. Gough’s History 
of Pleshy. 
In some cases it should seem that they 
were moveable: at least we gather so 
from the following passage in the Will of 
John Sothill, proved in the Registry at 
York, ‘October 3, 1500. (Reg. Ebor. 
Scroope. f. 236.) 
“ Twill that my son have the great 
chymney that was my, faders, and all the 
leds in the brew hous.” 
Harrison, in the Description of Bri- 
taine, written about 1570, prefixed to 
Holinshed’s Chronicle, gives a relation 
which seems to imply that they had not 
even then become very common in our 
country towns. 
“There are old men (he says) yet 
dwelling in the village where I remaine, 
which have noted three things too 
much increased. One is the multitude 
of chimnyes latelie erected, whereas in 
their yoong daies there were not above 
two or three, if so SR in most up- 
landish townes of the realme (the religi- 
ous houses, and manour places of their 
lords alwaies excepted, and peradven- 
ture some great parsonages) ; but each 
one made his fire against a rere-dosse in 
the hall, where he dined and dressed his 
meat,’ 
He afterwards adds, 
“« Now have we manye chimnyes, and 
vet our tenderlings complayn of rheums, 
catarrhs, and poses; then had we nothing 
but rere-dosses, and yet our heads did 
never ache. For as the smoke in those 
daies was supposed to be a sufficient 
hardning for the timber of the house, so 
it was reputed a farre better medicine to 
keepe the good man and his family from 
the quacke ar pose, wherewith as then 
very fewe were acquainted.” 
But Mr. King, in the History of Vale 
Royal, published in 1656, states their in- 
troduction ito Cheshire to have been 
considerably later :— 
The Antiquary.—Witch Elm. 
437 
«“ Tn the building and furniture of their 
houses (he observes), till of late years, 
they used the old mauner of the Saxons; 
for they had their fire in the midst of the 
honse, against a hob of clay, and their 
oxen under the same roof: but within 
these ‘forty years they have builded chim- 
neys.” 
Such are the principal testimonies 
which relate to the introduction of chim- 
nies. Their use became afterwards so 
general, that in the 14th of Charles the 
Second the duty paid to the crown on 
houses had the name of chimney-money. 
And it would be difficult, perhaps, to 
find a hovel at the present day without 
one. : 
Our ancestors, however, at remoter 
periods, seem to have tried different 
ways of getting rid of the smoke from 
their kitchens. 
The kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey, 
which had four fire-places in the lower 
part, had a roof which contracted in pro- 
portion to its height, and ended in a kind 
of open lantern. 
That at Stanton Harcourt, in Oxford- 
shire, belonging to the ancient residence 
of the Harcourt family, is still more cu- 
rious. It is built of stone, square be- 
low, octangular above, ending like a 
tower; and fires being made against the 
walls, the smoke climbed up them with- 
out any funnels, or disturbance to the 
cooks, and being stopped by a large co- 
nical roof, went out in loop-holes at the 
sides, which were shut or opened as the 
wind set, being formed by boards with 
hinges. L. 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIRS; 
SHALL be obliged to any of our 
Correspondents who can inform me 
(through the channel of your useful 
and widely-circulated miscellany) from 
whence came the term witch-elm,a name 
given to a species of elm-tree, to distin~ 
suish it from the common-elm. Some 
people have conjectured that it was a 
corruption of white elm, and so called 
from the silvery whiteness of its leaves 
when the sun shines upon them: but this 
is hardly probable, as Sir F. Bacon in his 
“ Silva Silvarum, or Natural History, in 
Ten Centuries,” speaks of it under-the 
name of weech elm, which I should think 
was the properest way to spell it. The 
insertion of this will much oblige, 
Your’s, &c. s. 
December 6, 1806. 
