A New Look at Iron Firebacks

The decorated cast iron plates that retain many an old farmhouse inglenook have long been of passing interest to antiquarians. As early as 1798 the Gentleman’s Magazine published a note on the found in Norwich. Many museums in the south east acquired firebacks in the early years of the last century; both Maidstone and Rochester have small but representative collections.

While firebacks have generally been the subject of notes and queries in antiquarian journals, or of sub-sections in books on decorative ironwork, few writers have devoted any serious consideration to their origin, manufacture and decoration. Studies on the subject have been written in Germany, France, Norway and even America, but not in Britain.

Of course, firebacks are still in use, and for a century or more there has been a steady trade in reproductions. Several firms advertise a range of designs cast using earlier plates as the pattern, and modern designs as well. Many old firebacks are themselves copies, only detectable, where earlier versions exist, by their slightly smaller dimensions because iron shrinks on cooling.

Most early writers on firebacks tended to generalise and, in some cases, made sweeping statements about their provenance. Because it was not possible then to compare images of large numbers of firebacks at a time detailed similarities and differences were not easy to detect. Nowadays, our increased knowledge of the industry that produced them, together with the availability of digital images, has changed all that. It is already becoming possible to draw more reasoned conclusions about groups of firebacks through close examination of shared features.

I would like to enlist the help of Society members and local history groups in telling me about firebacks they or their friends may possess, or which they have seen on visits to museums, pubs, and to houses, whether private or open to the public. I am assembling a catalogue of British fireback designs of the 16th to 18th centuries, to try to identify their age, what the designs refer to, and the places where some of them were made. Eventually it is hoped that the fruits of his research will be published as a book.

Please let me know of any firebacks you come across, by phone on 01293 886278, or email at jshodgkinson@hodgers.com. If you can send me a picture, so much the better. I am keen to record examples not already encountered, for inclusion in the catalogue.

Jeremy Hodgkinson