Another picture of Oakwell Hall, this time the side view. What struck me was the scale of the chimneys : one tends to forget just what an important and dominant part of a house of this age the chimneys were. There is no fire without smoke, and without fire, life would be very cold indeed. Coal, however, was cheap and plentiful : indeed the Hall is built on top of what was a rich coal seam.
10 comments:
That's better - as I was saying, it looks like coal was used in the construction.
Oh well - 3rd attempt. Blogger seems to have changed my name.
The chimneys do seem to dominate but they themselves are works of building art, the like of which is unseen in this modern age. Shame!
Chairman Phil : Are you any relation to the late Chairman Bill
I note the chimney on the left of the photo had to be rebuilt. The one trouble is, to get rid of the smoke, the chimney has to be tall, and when built of stone, that makes it very heavy, and if you don't keep them well repaired, they fall down straight through the roof....
Chimneys fall through the roof when not cared for. I see the left one has been rebuilt
In those days, life was all warm fronts and cold backs I suspect. They would have been able to afford a plethora of servants, so keeping fires going wouldn't have been a problem. This is an interesting view of the house - yesterday's is the more usual but I like this one.
while i'd be tempted to meodernize it inside to bring it to the level of comfort and technology we now take for granted, the outside is perfectly charming in my eyes.
nice show!!
HUGZ
...and what we have to sit by today in most of our houses is the "gas" fireplace. Yuck.
Do you think the wider chimney base on the right was used for cooking?
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