Keeping warm remained a challenge for most people right through the nineteenth century. Our Mr. Marsham had a fireplace in virtually every room of his rectory, even the dressing room, in addition to a hefty kitchen stove. Cleaning, laying, and stoking such a number must have been enormous work, yet for several months of the year the house was almost certainly uncomfortably cold. (It still is.) Fireplaces just aren’t efficient enough to keep any but the smallest spaces warm. This could be overlooked in a temperate place like England, but in the frigid winters of much of North America the
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