A Home's Most Popular Focal Point - The Fireplace

When chimneys, hearths and fireplaces started to disappear from English homes in the 1950's and 1960's, a vacuum was being left in the living room. Not a vacuum cleaner, though they were becoming common by then. New houses and flats (or apartments) were being built with 4 blank walls, except windows, in each room.

New home owners, excited about their new home, moved in and found themselves wondering how to arrange the furniture. No fireplace, no focal point. For some, television took over as the living room's focal point, but that hardly had the warmth and comfort of the good old fashioned fireplace, did it?

Despite that, fireplaces were being omitted from house designs, which was not surprising given there were no chimneys being built either. Worse still, wonderful old fireplaces and mantels were being ripped out of older houses at an alarming rate. Victorian fireplaces were being demolished, or pulled out in one piece, destined for the rubbish dump. Ancient stone fireplaces, centuries old, were being covered in, sometimes just with cheap plasterboard, other times with thick layers of cement, stone or brick.

Fireplaces, coal and log fires were well and truly out of fashion by the 1970's. The severity of London smogs had been part of the reason; the burning of coal fires could no longer be tolerated. Once the modern trend started, there was no stopping it.

Helping to accelerate the trend was convenience. Electric, and later natural gas, fires were much cleaner and easier to deal with. A coal fire was too much like hard work for a society whose pace (some will argue) was growing inexorably. Basically, people were lazy, and had no appreciation of the humble old fashioned fireplace and the fires they housed. Central heating, too, was becoming the norm.

Not everyone succumbed to modernity, though, and there were also far sighted entrepreneurial collectors, actually being paid to take away beautiful Victorian and other antique fireplaces and mantels. They were to reap their far sighted reward within a few short years.

It was not long before people started to long for a focal point in their bare walled rooms, and nobody had ever come up with anything to surpass the good old fireplace. From that yearning, the fireplace resurgence was quick, as false fireplaces with no chimneys became the new focal points. Artificial electric (and later natural gas) fires were to replace the warm comforts of the real thing.

In a few short years, those who had real fireplaces still, especially large ones more than a century old, benefited from a premium price on their homes. Nostalgia, and belated appreciation, had revived interest in log and coal fires, though the coal had been processed to produce less damaging smoke into the air.

Those people who moved into houses with covered up fireplaces eagerly ripped off the plasterboard, and chipped away at thick plaster, concrete, stone and brick, to reveal their hidden treasure. Those with nothing to uncover sought out the entrepreneurs who had picked up original Victorian fireplaces, in good condition, for nothing, which many homeowners now wanted to install in their new homes. Fireplace antiques became the vogue.

That transitional phase for fires and fireplaces spawned a major industry in new and artificial replacements, which have got more and more realistic over the years. Now, it seems, fireplaces are back with us for good, a major item of decor for the home, and still the favored room focal point for millions of people in colder climes. That is why we have added this special section to Gardens and Decor, and we hope you enjoy reading and browing through pages on firplace screens, tools and accessories.