bby may be
indulged in at a moderate cost. The collection of mantelpieces may be
left to the wealthy and to those who have baronial halls in which to
refix them. Fig. 1 represents an old fireplace in a panelled oak room
with a Tudor ceiling. There is a Sussex back of rather small size, and a
pair of andirons, on which a log of wood is shown reposing. An old
saucepan has been reared up in the corner, and there is a trivet on the
hearth. There is a very remarkable group of cresset dogs shown in Fig.
2. One pair of dogs or andirons has ratchets on which supplementary bars
were placed. These show an early advance from the simple andiron, and
point to the later developments of the fire-grate with the fast bars
which were to come. In the same group two rush-holders or candlesticks
are shown, one with a ratchet, the other adjusted on a simple rod, the
socket being held in place by a spring (see Figs. 4 and 5).

As time went on and change of fuel came about, the forests of England
being gradually consumed on the domestic hearth, coal was substituted
for the fast-vanishing wood. Then it was that a change was needed, and
instead of the open fireplace and the andirons on which the logs of wood
had formerly been laid, iron baskets or grates in which coal could be
placed were made, so that the scattering of fuel and cinders on the open
hearth could be prevented. Sussex backs gave place in time to the grate
in which a metal back was frequently incorporated, flanked by the dogs
in front. Then came the closed-in grates and the hob-registers of the
eighteenth century, many being designed after the beautiful
ornamentation produced by the Adam Brothers; also the decorative metal
work enriched with ormolu and brass, which in due course again gave way
to the plain and oftentimes ugly register grates of the Victorian Age,
which in more modern times have been displaced by the reproductions of
the antique, and by well-grates and scientifically constructed stoves
and heating radiators by which heat can be conserved, the draught of the
fire and the chimney regulated, and the coal burned more economically on
slow-combustion and semi-slow-combustion principles. Science has taught
builders and others how to radiate the heat, and prevent that waste
which formerly went up the chimney, so that the necessity to sit round
the fire is not as great as it once was, and rooms large and small are
more evenly heated. The fireplace has once more become a thing