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 constructed of clay, and differently contrived. The most primitive pots for setting over the fire on the tripod were probably of bronze.
The tripod seems to be substantially identical with what was known in Nidderdale as the kail-pot. "This was formerly in common use," says Mr. Lucas; "a round iron pan, about ten inches deep and eighteen inches across, with a tight-fitting, convex lid. It was provided with three legs. The kail-pot, as it was called, was used for cooking pies, and was buried bodily in burning peat. As the lower peats became red-hot, they drew them from underneath, and placed them on the top. The kail-pot may still be seen on a few farms." This was about 1870.