ert, cook to the abbey, as elsewhere
noticed, accompanied by his wife--unique relic of its kind; the other
a view of a small apartment with dressers and shelves, and with plates
and accessories hung round, in which a cook, perhaps the identical
Master Robert aforesaid, is plucking a bird. The fireplace is in
the background, and the iron vessel which is to receive the fowl,
or whatever it may really be, is suspended over the flame by a long
chain. The perspective is rather faulty, and the details are not very
copious; but for so early a period as the thirteenth or early part of
the following century its value is undeniable.

The "Penny Magazine" presents us with a remarkable exterior, that of
the venerable kitchen of Stanton-Harcourt, near Oxford, twenty-nine
feet square and sixty feet in height. There are two large fireplaces,
facing each other, but no chimney, the smoke issuing atthe holes, each
about seven inches in diameter, which run round the roof. As Lamb
said of his Essays, that they were all Preface, so this kitchen is
all chimney. It is stated that the kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey was
constructed on the same model; and both are probably older than the
reign of Henry IV. The one to which I am more immediately referring,
though, at the time (1835) the drawing was taken, in an excellent
state of preservation, had evidently undergone repairs and structural
changes.

It was at Stanton-Harcourt that Pope wrote a portion of his
translation of Homer, about 1718.

A manufactory of brass cooking utensils was established at Wandsworth
in or before Aubrey's time by Dutchmen, who kept the art secret.
Lysons states that the place where the industry was carried on bore
the name of the "Frying Pan Houses" [Footnote: A "Environs of London,"
1st ed., Surrey, pp. 502-3].

In the North of England, the _bake-stone_, originally of the material
to which it owed its name, but at a very early date constructed of
iron, with the old appellations retained as usual, was the universal
machinery for baking, and was placed on the _Branderi_, an iron frame
which was fixed on the top of the fireplace, and consisted of
iron bars, with a sliding or slott bar, to shift according to the
circumstances.

The tripod which held the cooking-vessel over the wood flame, among
the former inhabitants of Britain, has not been entirely effaced. It
is yet to be seen here and there in out-of-the-way corners and
places; and in India they use one construct