The old baking oven

It's been a while since I visited this roofless old farmhouse not far from me, so I was surprised to find that that the rubble-filled rooms have been cleared, stones have been piled up and there are all the signs that work has started to turn the ruin back into a dwelling. I was even more surprised to see the old oven that has been uncovered. It stands beside what looks like the remains of a hearth which would probably have contained a grate. The oven would have been heated via a flue from the open fire to a cavity under the baking surface. The vent below would have provided a air current and a means to remove ash. The stones are thick with a tarry deposit: not all the smoke would have gone straight up the chimney.

On a grey, bleak day like today this must have been the warm heart of the household, with children getting under the feet of their sweating mother and competing for a pastry offcut or a morsel of crust in return for fetching another load of wood. In summer the farmer's wife may have cursed her lot as she kneaded yet more dough and fired the oven to bake another batch of loaves for her hungry family out working in the fields.