The origin of the modern heating stove is intertwined with the history of domestic heating and cooking. From the Iron Age onwards, humans sought to cook food and heat their homes with a source of fire contained within their dwelling. Over ten thousand years or more, designs slowly matured to the point in the 18th century where it became apparent that different cooking and heating requirements would result in the creation of appliances specifically designed with each function in mind.

Several factors had led to this desire for “autonomous” heating devices. The middle class was becoming more affluent and demanded houses that separated kitchen, living room and dining room. His ascending aspirations found it unacceptable to cook and eat in one room. These same ‘consumers’ also began to demand heat sources, which did not waste 80-90% of the fuel in the chimney – they did not have the unlimited budgets of the landowners. Finally, the Industrial Revolution had generated an ideal material for the construction of heating stoves: cast iron. First perfected by Abraham Darby in Coalbrookdale in the early 1700s, cast iron was Georgia’s great building material with all its attributes of easy fabrication, easy molding, and good thermal qualities.

In the 17th century, country knights had begun experimenting with stove-like designs. In fact, Prince Rupert, especially the nephew of Charles I, was probably responsible for the first fire in the convector. However, it was another 100 years or so before we saw the work of the two true pioneers of today’s stove designs: the American patriot, Benjamin Franklin, and the British aristocrat turned ‘Yankee rebel’ – Earl Rumford. Franklin, whose science experiments included the dangerous habit of flying kites in thunderstorms, found that a fuel burning uncontrollably on a grate imparted little heat to the room. Its design used a convection chamber, very similar to current convector fires, to get more efficiency from the fire. The air for this chamber was often drawn in from the basement, adding a degree of fresh air to the room. Rumford’s contribution was less to stoves than to fires in general. He first suggested the chimney throat to control and increase the chimney draft. He also used a variable metal damper in the throat of the chimney to add more control and stop drafts when the chimney was not working.

While James Bodley patented the first stove design in 1802, his design was more of a kitchen stove. Indeed, for much of the 19th century, the British love of outdoor fireplaces limited the demand for stoves in the UK, while their demand flourished in colder continental Europe and the USA. they also saw stoves as responsible for the severe air pollution that London suffered for 150 years from the early 19th century onwards. Early stove designs did not burn charcoal with real efficiency. They produced foul-smelling and irritating fumes, causing, it was said, “stove malaria” and “iron cough.” Edinburgh’s nickname of ‘Auld Reekie’ dates from this time and refers to the foul smell of smoke from its myriad open and closed coal fires.

The stoves were collectively more popular in the colder climates of continental Europe and the recently liberated US states. Scotland, with its harsh winters and readily available supplies of coal and iron, proved to be an ideal location for stove making. The first third of the 19th century saw various innovators introduce stoves to the market. In 1830 Charles Portway designed and hand-built his first Tortoise stove in Halstead, Essex. Charles owned a hardware store and when neighboring stores saw how effective his stove was, they all wanted one. Portway started a small foundry that, by the early 1900s, had produced more than 100,000 stoves. Meanwhile, in Norway Adelsten Onsum founded the precursor of today’s Jtul Company, Kverner Brug, in 1853. Onsum, an entrepreneur in the purest Victorian style, founded a number of industrial companies, but it was not until after he lost control of Kverner Brug on the financial crisis in Norway. From the 1880s the name Jtul was adopted. Like today, the stoves were made from recently popular cast iron and offered previously shivering Norwegian people the opportunity to stay warm through long winters at a reasonably acceptable cost. American designs tended to be less ornate, with many believing the “West won” in the back of the potbellied stove that heated the saloon bar and cowboy ranch alike. Many were portable and moved west as new frontiers were opened or from battle to battle as the Civil War took over most of America’s land mass.

In the Black Country, The Cannon Hollowware Company, later to become Cannon Industries, produced a series of stoves heated by the now popular city gas. The most popular was probably the Grosvenor introduced in 1895, the Grosvenor was all the rage in part because, as the advertising blurb of the day informed potential buyers, “it comes complete with internal chambers to use residual heat after it (leaves) the fire. “. . This popular stove was sold widely in urban areas, came in two sizes, and can be seen as the precursor to Cannon’s hundred-year involvement in gas fire production.

At the dawn of the 20th century, stoves were not a popular means of heating the nation’s living rooms. The ‘working class’ could not afford coal to heat properly, let alone ‘expensive’ stoves to improve the way fuel was burned. The middle class in the cities used gas fires, while the villagers did not like the aesthetics of these appliances so decorated that they seemed out of place in their demure homes. Among the landed nobility and the newly enriched, stoves were popular, but not as a source of heating for public spaces. Large kitchens, service corridors or nurseries might boast a stove, but the rooms visitors saw would include an open fire that was fed and cleaned by servants who made up 10% of the UK population in former Britain. to the First World War.

Throughout the first sixty years of the 20th century, stoves were sold primarily to the commercial sector, to the growing number of offices, shops, train waiting rooms, and public buildings, along with a thriving export trade to the Empire. Smith & Wellsilst’s 1912 catalog featured more than 200 designs (kitchen cooks and heating stoves) with names like Indess, The Moariess, and Sultana. Prices ranged from 10 cents (50 pence!) And demand kept Smith & Wells Stand in business until the 1980s. Possibly the Company’s biggest claim to fame were its cooking stoves. Captain Scott took a few on his unfortunate journey to reach the South Pole. One was found by an American expedition in 1953. They cleaned up the ash and turned it back on and found it to work perfectly.

An opening for stoves came with the discovery of large deposits of anthracite in South Wales and Scotland. In the immediate aftermath of World War I, mine owners approached Smith & Wells Stand to make a stove that could burn anthracite. The aftermath of the war, with more than a million men killed, meant that wealthier families had a hard time finding servants, and anthracite, with its clean combustion products and burning all night, required much less work than the designs. traditional. Smith & Wells Stand produced a wide range of designs such as Jeunesse, Artesse and Francesse, which were the forerunners of modern solid fuel room heaters. In recognition, the mine owners named their fuel ‘Stovesse’, the suffix … esse is the origin of the well-known foundry brand Ouzledale.

The clean air legislation of 1955/56 followed smoke-induced smog for a month in the early 1950s and slashed any market that would have existed for the solid fuel stove. For fifteen years or so there was little market in the UK until oil prices quadrupled after the Israeli Arab Six-Day War of 1973. Large house owners had installed oil boilers during the 1960s and now they don’t. they could afford to heat their properties. Mainly villagers, they desperately searched for another source of heating and found that many of them had supplies of wood available on their land. Stoves became popular and have remained that way to this day.