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Keeping the Home Fires Burning

Close to the Hearth

Fires lending that 18th-century ambiance burn brightly on the streets, as well as the hearths, of Colonial Williamsburg. Pine fatwood glows in wire mesh baskets called cressets, often mounted on poles, to illuminate streets. Preston Jones, above, is a silversmith and cresset tender in the historic area. Here, he adds more wood to a cresset in front of the Mary Dickinson Store on Duke of Gloucester Street. Jones says the thick smoke caused by the resinous wood also is good for keeping mosquitoes away in the summer.
Fires lending that 18th-century ambiance burn brightly on the streets, as well as the hearths, of Colonial Williamsburg. Pine fatwood glows in wire mesh baskets called cressets, often mounted on poles, to illuminate streets. Preston Jones, above, is a silversmith and cresset tender in the historic area. Here, he adds more wood to a cresset in front of the Mary Dickinson Store on Duke of Gloucester Street. Jones says the thick smoke caused by the resinous wood also is good for keeping mosquitoes away in the summer. (Courtesy Colonial Williamsburg)
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By Jura Koncius
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 16, 2006

The warmth of logs crackling in a fireplace is partly physical, partly emotional.

"When you walk down the streets on a snowy night on your way to an inn for dinner, with the smell of fires blazing and the piles of wood stacked up on the street, it's really a wonderful experience," says Edward Chappell.

Chappell should know. For the past 26 years, he has been director of architectural research at Colonial Williamsburg, where fireplaces throughout the historic area flicker from late September until early April. There has never been an official count, but Chappell puts the number at upwards of 1,000, including those for blacksmiths and cooks, who have fires every day of the year.

Colonial fireplaces, of course, were needed for sheer survival. In historic Williamsburg today, the scent of wood smoke in the autumn air and the chance to gaze into the embers of a tavern's blazing hearth are worth the price of admission. Call it instant 18th-century ambiance.

Plenty of 21st-century households appreciate that ambiance, even if they might not have the skills to maintain it. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are among the last keepers of the wood-gathering and fire-building flame, once passed down from parent to child.

Picture the scene: Family and friends gathered around your fireplace on the first really chilly night of November as you try to coax a flame from a bundle of green wood bought at the supermarket and just stripped of its shrink-wrap cover. You stuff more crumpled newspapers around the edges and light endless matches, while the rest of the group happily critiques your efforts. Why bother with all this, when all we need to do is crank up the furnace?

Because fires are an iconic domestic rite as old as mankind.

"The word hearth is deeply rooted in the romantic thoughts about home," wrote the late designer Mark Hampton. "And like us, I suppose, the cave man wanted the principal seating group arranged around the fire."

So let us help you get in touch with your inner cave man, with advice on choosing the right wood, stacking and stoking the fire, understanding safety and maintenance or -- if you'd rather -- finding flip-of-a-switch alternatives.



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