Calke
Abbey Derbyshire |
The present Calke Abbey
building is an amalgum of the three buildings that
have stood on the same site. The first was Calke
Priory built in the 1100's. The second was a
modernisation made during the Elizabethan period and
finally the Mansion House as it stands currently was
built in the very early 1700's. The house, gardens and estate were the home of the Harpur family from 1622 until it became the property of National Trust in 1985. |
The Abbey does not possess any original central heating. Other than the Entrance Hall, all the rooms are heated by open-fire places. However, the cast iron stove fitted in the
Entrance Hall is of particular engineering interest as
it is of a pattern that uses a downward discharge
arrangement for the removal of the flue gases. The
installation of a vertical flue from the stove was
impractical due to the location of the Saloon room
above. The flue was therefore routed through an
underfloor duct that connects with the open-fire place
in the adjacent room that has a vertical chimney. The
fire in the open-fire place when lighted would warm
the chimney enough to provide sufficient draught
necessary to induce and draw through the flue gases
from the stove’s underfloor flue.
The heating effect from
the stove is provided by radiation direct from the
open fire and side panels, and
by convection through the circular brass hit-and-miss
grille fitted in the top of the stove.
This
pattern of warm air stove with an underground
flue system is a rare discovery and most
unusual. Only one other example is known to
exist, and that is located at the Argory, the
National Trust property in Northern Ireland.
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The
estate has several walled gardens Physic, Orangery
and Flower with hot houses that contained and grew
tropical fruits such as Oranges, Peaches and
Pineaples.
The various buildings forming part of the
gardens and its hot houses have several areas of
engineering interest. Different
styles or types of heating systems serve the
Orangeries, Pineries, Peach Houses and other glazed
hothouses. The variety of heating arrangements in
these garden buildings have created a timeline showing
how the evolution of heating in hot houses progressed
from the 1700’s and into the 1800’s. Chronologically,
It is unfortunate that the majority of the heating system's ironwork had been removed from the Garden buildings. This occured before The National Trust acquired the property in 1985. Luckily though, much of the original brickwork for the furnaces, flues and chimneys together with some cast iron pipework can still be seen. A Cockle
warm air stove still preserved in a reasonable
condition.
The cockle iron stove is completely enclosed within the brickwork furnace and unfortunately therefore, it is not possible to establish the internal structural arrangement of the cockle and its associated brickwork. That
this rare cockle stove still exists affords a
wonderful opportunity to carry out remedial
structural works to open up the brickwork and expose
the front end of the cockle, to show its size,
construction and shape.
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