Bread oven

[CliffordPope]

The other thread on firepace puzzle has set me thinking about our own chimney and oven in our cottage. I don't want to hijack the other thread.

What do you make of this?

There are four chambers. The top one is shallow, not connected to the flue, and appears to be just a shelf.
The lowest one is at floor level and has an iron grate at the top, connecting to a fire box above. The latter has the remains of an iron door, and has three flues - one at the back and one at each side. All three pass upwards into the third chamber, which is the largest. It has a flat smooth base, which seems to be made of some hard dense stone almost like granite, certainly not the local slate which is soft and wouldn't stand intense heat from a fire underneath.
This chamber is quite high, crudely domed inside behind the iron door, and there is a single flue at the back passing on up inside the wall, emerging about six feet higher up inside the big chimney.

Presumably this was for baking bread? But would you want hot flames and smoke passing through the actual oven? Or would you wait until the fire consisted only of burning red charcoal and the smoke had given way to hot gas? It seems a small fire chamber to produce enough heat to bring the entire oven up to temperature, so was the baking down in the hot draught, like a kind of fan-oven?

The oven is set in the wall at the back of a large "big chimney" in a small welsh cottage, and is I think original and unaltered. I have records of inhabitants in the late eighteenth century, but its actual age I don't know. When I bought it in 1985 it had been only intermittantly inhabited, used as an annexe or a store for the main house just across the road, a former farm, where we live. There were the rusty crumbled remains of a victorian range inside the chimney area, with an iron flue up into the big tapering chimney above. Judging from the smoke-blackened wall at the back of the area the original fire would have been open, on a slab or in a basket. The opening had been boarded over level with the top of the big lintel, with a hole for the flue, now useful for the insulated flue of the woodburner.
There is an access trapdoor in the ceiling and a dark and very claustrophobic chamber above inside the actual chimney. There were remains of charred wooden cross-poles presumably for hanging meat for smoking.

 

[TheSpid]

That's really interesting Clifford. I wish I had some answers but I do have to say I am jealous of your door.

 

[worms]

Interesting set-up (particularly the old smoking chamber!). From the pic of the main oven, it looks like the flue gasses all pass up behind the two stacks of bricks, so perhaps in practice, once the fire was running, very little smoke was entering the cooking part of the oven itself? I guess this might make for a much more flexible and useable oven than a classic bread oven, that had to be loaded, heated and then swept out to put the bread in.

The top chamber could have been the place to keep the salt dry or to keep the yeast culture at a sensible temperature.

 

[CliffordPope]

Interesting. The top shelf would certainly be dry, and perhaps quite warm if the oven was used daily.

The main chamber actually has three flues passing around it - the one at the back, behind the two stacks of bricks, and two at the front hidden from view by the brick stacks framing the door.

I can't find anything similar online. All the pictures show the usual single oven of the fire-up/shovel out kind, not a continuous one.
Is it possible to put a date to the design? It seems both quite clever but also rather crude - it would be bound to produce rather smokey bread I'd have thought. (Thinks - perhaps I ought to try it!)

The closest I have found is the french ‘Gueulard’ bakery oven, invented in the late 19th century, where the hot flames were directed through the oven from a separate firebox, but via closable flaps and pipe, the "gueulard". The fire normally burned with its own separate flue, only directed over the top of the oven chamber as required.
Mine would be completely uncontrollable, as all the firebox flames would have to pass through the oven.

 

[Kearn]

In some ways quite ingenious, if possibly crudely constructed.

I assume that the ash falls into the lower hole through the grate, which is nice and efficient.
And equally that the baking slab gets nice and hot from the fire underneath, as it seems this is the main heat retainer as opposed to the dome.
Plus nice warm air also and moisture from the fire itself makes its way into the baking chamber, which is important in baking bread. I would think that's why they went to the trouble of constructing three flues to distribute the heat as just one would be adequate to vent the smoke. There's one way I guess to see how full of smoke the baking area gets...!

The previous post had prompted me to do some research also and this arrangement would allow for consistent temperature control and continual baking, whereas having a fire in the baking area then sweeping out the ashes requires a waiting period for the oven to cool adequately before baking and obviously a slow decline in temperature during the bake. Wonder if this was a constant source of bread for the farm workers...

 

[CliffordPope]

Should I conclude from the lack of sightings of any similar set-ups that this is quite rare? Would any organisation be interested in logging it?

 

[CliffordPope]

Update - I've recently spotted an almost identical oven at Llanerchaeron Mansion in Ceredigion. Even the colour of the bricks and the lower pointed arch is the same. It's not in the big house, but in the bakery which is one of a range of special rooms arranged around a square courtyard adjoining the main house.
I can understand that it would be a considerable advantage to have continuous bread production at a big house employing dozens of hungry workers, but our cottage was until about 1880 the sole building for a 40 acre farm, when they built the present larger house where we live. It was and largely remains completely isolated in the middle of nowhere, and there is no record of its ever being a community bakery etc, just a small farm.
Perhaps it's just a better quality Welsh way of doing things!

 

[Rob Duff]

Update - I've recently spotted an almost identical oven at Llanerchaeron Mansion in Ceredigion. Even the colour of the bricks and the lower pointed arch is the same. It's not in the big house, but in the bakery which is one of a range of special rooms arranged around a square courtyard adjoining the main house.
I can understand that it would be a considerable advantage to have continuous bread production at a big house employing dozens of hungry workers, but our cottage was until about 1880 the sole building for a 40 acre farm, when they built the present larger house where we live. It was and largely remains completely isolated in the middle of nowhere, and there is no record of its ever being a community bakery etc, just a small farm.
Perhaps it's just a better quality Welsh way of doing things!

Hi,

Did you ever do any further research on your chambers/oven below your bread oven?

We have bought a house in Somerset & have found a similar arrangement, although our chamber is now empty (with the exception of some bones).

Our chambers have two openings, one of which we have opened up (photos below), but does not have any direct connection to the fires in the bread oven above & to the washing copper to the left, so we are thinking it may just be a large oven for slow roasting meat/cooking pies, etc.

Our chamber also has 2 openings, the higher level one we have opened plus a ground floor one, indicating possibly that there was a top hot oven & a lower slow cook oven.

We think our bread oven & washing copper were added to th house c.1680 & then modified to burn coal c.1740: Our other fireplaces were similarly modified at those dates.

Any info you have found would be grealy appreciated.

 

[CliffordPope]

Sorry, I haven't found out anything more. There don't seem to be any earlier records than late eighteenth century, and the only maps are so general and small scale as not to mark the cottage anyway. The parish records exist of course, but the surname was Jones, and this is deepest Wales!
I did find a mummified cat buried in a wall. I don't know if that helps date when the cottage was built?

 

[woodie baker]

The other thread on firepace puzzle has set me thinking about our own chimney and oven in our cottage. I don't want to hijack the other thread.

What do you make of this?

There are four chambers. The top one is shallow, not connected to the flue, and appears to be just a shelf.
The lowest one is at floor level and has an iron grate at the top, connecting to a fire box above. The latter has the remains of an iron door, and has three flues - one at the back and one at each side. All three pass upwards into the third chamber, which is the largest. It has a flat smooth base, which seems to be made of some hard dense stone almost like granite, certainly not the local slate which is soft and wouldn't stand intense heat from a fire underneath.
This chamber is quite high, crudely domed inside behind the iron door, and there is a single flue at the back passing on up inside the wall, emerging about six feet higher up inside the big chimney.

Presumably this was for baking bread? But would you want hot flames and smoke passing through the actual oven? Or would you wait until the fire consisted only of burning red charcoal and the smoke had given way to hot gas? It seems a small fire chamber to produce enough heat to bring the entire oven up to temperature, so was the baking down in the hot draught, like a kind of fan-oven?

The oven is set in the wall at the back of a large "big chimney" in a small welsh cottage, and is I think original and unaltered. I have records of inhabitants in the late eighteenth century, but its actual age I don't know. When I bought it in 1985 it had been only intermittantly inhabited, used as an annexe or a store for the main house just across the road, a former farm, where we live. There were the rusty crumbled remains of a victorian range inside the chimney area, with an iron flue up into the big tapering chimney above. Judging from the smoke-blackened wall at the back of the area the original fire would have been open, on a slab or in a basket. The opening had been boarded over level with the top of the big lintel, with a hole for the flue, now useful for the insulated flue of the woodburner.
There is an access trapdoor in the ceiling and a dark and very claustrophobic chamber above inside the actual chimney. There were remains of charred wooden cross-poles presumably for hanging meat for smoking.

Hi the bottom fire area would have heated the oven and been used for home smoking (preserving of food in the main chamber if not baking). When you bake bread you use the residual heat from the fire so there would be no flames or smoke. Bakers usually rake out the ashes prior to baking. The brick would keep their heat for a while to cook bread. A small hand mop would be used to add water to the oven before the bread went in (for steam). The top shelf on the oven would properly be used for proving bread before baking.