nce upon Colonial times, the fireplace supported the entire household.
On it rested one end of the summer beam, a massive, hand-hewn timber that ran to the opposite wall and supported the upper floor and roof of the house. It follows that the fireplace would have been the first thing those early settlers built, scouring the woods and nearby fields for stones large and regular enough to trust their lives to, quite literally.
Not only was that fireplace the center of home construction, it was also central to their daily lives. Here they cooked their meals; here they gathered for warmth and for conviviality, to exchange the news of the day, to soak in heat so they could then scurry up the ladder and into their chilly attic beds at night.
We’re not much different today. The hearth remains the emotional center of our homes some three centuries later. It’s a role that can fall to any fireplace, of course, but seems to resonate most deeply with natural stone.
There’s one major difference, however, between our forebears’ fieldstone fireplace and the one you build today: They could haul the ingredients home from the fields. Indeed, they needed to get them out of the way of the crops. What we need today are deep pockets. Unlike more docile, domesticated fireplaces, which come factory-engineered for easy, inexpensive installation almost anywhere you want to put them, a stone fireplace is a hand-built work of art that requires a skilled stone mason, a supply of good-looking stones (imported, perhaps, from the depths of some faraway region) and the budget to bring them together.
A chilling thought? Not at all. Once you warm to the idea, it will become a labor of love you’ll love living with for a lifetime of brisk winter afternoons and dark, cold nights.
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