So underneath the lousy wallpaper was a lousy plastering job .. it wasn't even flush. But what was it covering? Would I find some lovely original tiled Victorian fireplace insert underneath possibly? On the bright side, the fireplace was in use with an old, now removed gas burner. This means that we could replace it with a working fireplace .. only a nice one this time.
With the metal grate removed, I did find a Victorian insert. I could use many words to describe it, but lovely wouln't be one of them. The original large fireplace had been fairly clumsily bricked up and a cracked insert was placed there surrounded by building waste. Not ideal.
For those interested, more on the history of fireplaces can be found here
As I removed the insert, more rubble began falling through. As if it was mocking me, lovely Victorian tile fragments came falling down. Did somebody really smash away those nice tiles to put in this ugly insert? We will never know.
Anyway, there was a whole lot of material coming out of this thing. Good thing we have a skip on the way soon.
And back to the original opening. You can see the small arch created by height-wise bricks that supported the opening. This was held in place by a metal bar running underneath the arch. We were tempted to work with the exposed brick, but have decided to just plaster over the whole thing and install a nice mantel/fireplace surround.
The question we are pondering now is whether to put in a non-functional Victorian insert or go with a log burning stove. Either would be a huge improvement over what was there before.
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