Connections by James Burke

Author:James Burke [Burke, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Technology & Engineering, History, Business & Economics, General
ISBN: 9780743299558
Google: 0pNcyyognnUC
Amazon: 0743299558
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-07-02T22:00:00+00:00

A painting (1438) of St. Barbara, incorporating the latest luxuries afforded by the presence of the chimney. Wooden furniture keeps her feet off the tiled floor, glass windows are backed by storm shutters, and beyond the chimney-hood a towel hangs above a ewer full of warm water. The chimney stimulated indoor activities such as reading.

The building to which the new chimney was added had already begun to change in reaction to the bad weather. The open patio-style structure had been replaced by a closed-off building, built to withstand violent meteorological changes. The new chimney, whose earliest English example is at Conisborough Keep in Yorkshire (1185), also produced structural changes in the house. The use of a flue to conduct away sparks meant that the center of the room was no longer the only safe place for the fire. To begin with, buildings were by now less fully timbered so the risk was less, and the flue permitted the setting of the fire in a corner or against a wall. The extra insulation needed for safety introduced more brickwork (a good fire retardant), and as the section of wall by the chimney was thus strengthened, the chimney began to act as a spine that could be used to support more than one room—which, in any case, could now be heated by separate fireplaces. The hood on the fireplace prevented sparks from reaching the ceiling, and as a smaller room could more readily be heated than a larger one, the ceilings could now be lower.

The primary effect of the introduction of these new rooms was to separate the social classes. The first chimneys in royal residences were constructed in rooms to which the king could withdraw, at first with his immediate family, later with officials. The English Privy Council did not come into existence (in 1300) before there was a place to be private. Special state apartments were constructed, and separately heated. Bathing became more common. The smaller rooms also meant that paperwork could continue through the winter. (Again and again, from the fifth to the eleventh century, we read of monks complaining that their hands are too cold in winter, and that sometimes the ink freezes in the pots.) Separate accounting offices were built, like the one in Abingdon Abbey, in 1260. As the general economic pace of Europe was quickening at exactly the same time, due to the innovative use of water power on an extensive scale, there was more paperwork than there had been previously, and so the ability to work through the winter as a result of the introduction of the chimney was of fundamental importance in the commercial recovery of the continent.

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