OK maybe the hearth history buffs can help me out! Lets play identify the stove door....

Alright folks. I'm probably breaking some unwritten internet rule cross posting but so far we cant figure this out over at oldhouseweb... I'm trying to identify when and where these brick bake oven iron doors might have been made. This is part of my ongoing quest to more accurately date when parts of the house were built.

These doors are for bake ovens around the fireplace in the second chimney in the back ell of my house (where a summer kitchen might have been built in the mid 1800s). My best guess is that these are well past 1800 as they look to be factory cast and are quite sophisticated for the era have working flue dampers and air inlets. I'm guessing they are factory mass produced item. I've looked and cannot find and foundry name or date cast into them. Its a double oven pair, lower oven has a flue opening to the upper oven at the back and the upper oven is domed and has the flue connection to the chimney stack at the front.

More background if it helps... The house itself we only know is somewhere between 1790 and 1835. Its all hand hewn timber frame and the size of the floors and subfloors in the front of the house would point to an early date - or reuse of an older building, but the type of cut nails used throughout, a lot of federal and greek trim and the lack of a big central cooking fireplace point to later. We have a map dated 1831 that places a house on this plot and Ive traced the deeds back to the 1850s.

Here is a shot of the entire stack. 2 ovens at the top and a storage cubbyhole down at the bottom (I would have though ash dump but its NOT connected to the evens in any way)



BTW they might a nice place to store a couple days worth of wood and all my tools

neat! Thanks for sharing.

Call me nuts but when I was in Bosnia those hearth ovens where all over the place. I wonder if it may be a import or maybe an immigrant made piece!

Happy new year!
Pete

I want one, or is it 2?