Gunda Béla et al. (szerk.): Ideen, Objekte und Lebensformen. Gedenkschrift für Zsigmond Bátky - István Király Múzeum közelményei. A. sorozat 29. (Székesfehérvár, 1989)

Alexander Fenton: The Hearth as a Marker of Social Change: the Scottish Example

Fig. X.: Diagram of hearth types (K = kitchen/living room; B = best room). From top to bottom, left to right: central hearth and smoke hole; central hearth with stone back and smoke hole; hanging chimney with built-in back; the same in the kitchen end, with a gable chimney and coal-burning grate in the best room; the southern Scottish central hood above a central fire; the ’Lothian brace’ against a gable wall. B. Walker. 08528.

In the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in the Northwest of Scotland, for example, entire villages have changed location in the course of time as nearby sources of peat fuel ran out.(7)

Peat was burned in an open hearth and could provide energy in the form of heat, or in the form of fertiliser, for the ashes were returned to the fields directly or else indirectly by using them in the byre to soak up urine from the animals. In this way it was doubly useful as a resource. It had the great advantage as fuel that, unlike coal, it could burn readily on a flat surface without any need for an arrangement to bring a draught of air under it. For this reason, peat-fired hearths were usually at floor level on flat slabs or cobbling. Indeed, excavations in Viking houses in the north of Scotland have shown that a living room might have several temporary hearths within it(8), used, of course, at different times. With peat as a fuel, such movement of the hearth was not a problem, though it is true that hearth positions are normally fixed to one spot in places of permanent residence.

If an attempt is made to work out categories of hearths— which need not be the same as establishing a sequence of chronological development—the nature of the fuel and the position of the fire within the room are important. A common and widespread position was in the centre of the floor. Examples can still be found in peat-burning areas in North and West Scotland. The simplest form was a rough circle or square or rectangle of flat stones, usually set in clay; sometimes an old millstone served as a base(9), and in one instance, the hearth was encircled by a cart-wheel ring.(10) Though central hearths could be

called ‘the round fire’(u) (as in Shetland), and might measure from 122—183 cm. in diameter, four-sided forms coexisted and are traceable back to the late 11th and early 12th centuries, by which period the ‘long-hearth’ (langeldr) of Viking times had become reduced in length to this form(12). Whatever the basic shape, such hearths tended to be slightly raised above the rest of the floor, perhaps by as much as 10 cm.(13)

This form of central hearth, around which it was possible to walk, either had no chimney, in which case the smoke filled the space and oozed out where it could, or else there was a smoke hole in the ridge of the roof, through which the worst of the smoke could escape. The present writer found when visiting a house with a central hearth, and no chimney, in the Western island of Lewis, that the important thing was to sit down as quickly as possible. The atmosphere then became tolerable, for with a decent fire, the spreading heat kept the smoke above the level of the sitters’ heads (Pl. I.: 1.). Though the area of survival is the north (Pl. L: 2.) and west of Scotland, central hearths were formerly general. An example in a house built of turf in the Carse of Stirling, about 60 km from the Scottish capital, was drawn by the artist Joseph Farrington in 1792,(14) though by this time they were already becoming scarce in the more southerly areas.

The first form of sophistication of this type of hearth took place without loss of its free-standing position, but simply through the addition of a backing stone or part wall. This stood between the fire and the access door to reduce the effect of draughts, and could consist of a single low stone, a flagstone set on edge, or a built structure which in Orkney and Shetland could stand 122—152 cm. high by 122—183 cm. wide, with a thickness of about 48 cm. (Pl. II.: 1—2.). Besides acting as a draught-screen, the more solid backs provided a ledge on top, where utensils could be laid, taking them off the level of the floor. There is no early archaeological evidence for such backs, but a flagstone example was found in a late 18th century home in Perthshire, in Central Scotland (PI. IL: 3.). A built example at Kirbister, Orkney, may belong to the first half of the 18th century, if it is contemporary with the building of the house (though this cannot be accepted as certain). For lack of evidence to the contrary, it may be assumed that the adoption of backs on central hearths, as recorded in North and Central Scotland, is a sign of the beginnings of a move towards the general improvements that appeared in rural housing in the second half of the 18th century.

(7) A. Fenton, The Island Blackhouse (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office), 1978, 39.

(8) Cf. A. Small, A Viking Longhouse in Unst, Shetland. In B. Niclasen, ed., The Fifth Viking Congress, 1968, 62—70.

(9) D. Sage, Memorabilia Domestica 1899, 10—11.

(10) E. C. Curwen, The Hebrides: a Cultural Backwater, in Antiquity XII (1937), 288.

(11) A. Fenton, The Northern Isles. Orkney and Shetland, 1978, 195.

(12) J. R. C. Hamilton, Excavations at Jarslshof, Shetland (HMSO), 1956, 157.

(13) M. Smith, Shetland Croft Houses and their Equipment, in

Shetland Folk Book, IV (1964), 4.

(14) A. Fenton and B. Walker, The Rural Architecture of Scotland, 1981,9—10.

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