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. 2.: A hanging chimney of wood at Westerkirk, Dumfries, South West Scotland. From a drawing by R. Bryden, c.1900

(National Museums of Scotland Library).

The name brace or brace-steen (stone) was given to the back in Caithness, where it was said to divide the room into ‘fore ’e fire’ (before the fire), where the family sat, and ‘back o’ the fire’, where barrels, tubs, peat etc. were stored.(15) It is evident, therefore, that the use of such back-stones marks the beginnings of a more formal division of space in the kitchen area, which led finally to the creation of a separated lumber or store-room.

Two lines of change can be traced from the central fire with a back, or may stand alongside it. Either the central position was given up entirely and the fire moved to the gable, or the back was extended into a cross-wall, to form a new internal partition, as at the farm of Appiehouse in Orkney about the middle of the 19th century.(16) In both cases, the effect was to produce a gable fireplace, the variations in which are characterised chiefly by differences in the form of the chimney. Even in this position, however,’ as long as peat fuel was usual, the fire was likely to be at floor level, and in some areas what appears to be a survival of the free-standing back stone may be observed, in the form of a large stone built into the wall. Where the wall was built mainly of turf, such a stone was essential to keep the wall from taking fire, but back stones can be found in stone walls also, or built against them. (Fig. 1.) However, though it is easy to postulate continuity from central hearths with backstones, it is equally valid to

remember the substantial heat-reflecting iron fire-backs, some dating from the 17th century, that characterised the hearths of castles and mansions throughout Britain. Such pieces of equipment were simply called ‘backs’ in older Scots, and often stood behind a grate. References are mainly from the 17th century:

‘ane irne bak for ane chemlay’, 1610; ‘ane irone chimnay, ane pair of irone rakis and ane irone bak’, 1620; ‘ane chimney of yron with standing raxes (bars to support a toasting spit), and ane Flanders bak’, 1630; ‘a new chemlay... with a high backe, all of iyron, behind’, 1661.(17) In these sources, the word ‘chimney’ implies the hearth itself, and in some cases possibly a brazier type hearth. These references are to houses in towns. One source indicates the importing of such iron backs from Flanders, implying that they were costly items. The use of stone backs, free-standing or within or against a gable wall, is completely similar in intention. They date from the days of widespread and far-reaching agricultural improvements in the 18th century, and influence from higher social levels can in no way be discounted. Their use in or

(15) D. B. Nicolson in County of Caithness 1907, 66.

(16) A. Fenton, The Northern Isles. Orkney and Shetland, 1978, 125.

(17) Quoted in Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue s. v. Bak.

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