The Westhampton Historical Society is pleased to report that the baking oven and chimney project at the Foster-Meeker Heritage Center is now complete. A special thank you is due to contributing members who matched a grant from the Robert G.L. Gardiner Foundation.
The three fireplaces constructed in the Foster-Meeker Heritage Center in 2017 are reproductions of fireplaces typical of center-chimney houses of the 1730s. These fireplaces were designed to serve specific rooms, such as the hall, parlor, and buttery rooms common to houses of this era. The Foster-Meeker Heritage Center is a New England Colonial/Cape-style house that started out with two fireplaces: one each for the hall and buttery. The parlor fireplace would have been constructed when an addition was made to the west end of the original house. In this house, the main cooking fireplace was in the hall (now the east room).
The fireboxes are designed in the Rumford style, common during the period, with a shallow depth and sharply angled sides to force more heat out into the rooms. The taller firebox opening for the hall fireplace allowed better access to the bake oven, with less bending over required during baking.
The “beehive” bake oven design was common up through the Federal period, with little change with regard to the placement of the brick, but the size of the ovens did vary. It was common to place the bake oven in the center of the firebox in the earliest periods, but it was later moved to one side of the firebox for easier and safer access. Still later, the bake oven opening was moved to the front wall of the fireplace to one side of the firebox opening. These later bake ovens were more costly to construct since they had to have separate flues as well as ash dump chutes that emptied into the separate fireplace.
Generally, the main cooking fireplace was kept burning constantly, or had the ashes carefully banked to allow for easy start-up. The great mass of the fireplace and chimney masonry soaked up a lot of heat and slowly radiated it back into the center of the house, which could keep the house warm for days.
An article by Erin McKinley, entitled “Historical Society Secures Matching Grant To Complete Work At Foster-Meeker House In Westhampton Beach” can be read here at 27east.com
