Here's one for the clever guys/dolls!

[tim]

Pic 1 was 45 years ago. It's an interior wall.

For some reason, we decided to excavate = Pic  2.

Planning now to put a woodburner in, we find that:
a. The register plate is level with the top of the picture - 5' above the floor.
b. 30" above that - at ceiling level - we have this strange contraption = Pic 3. The ring is about 20" in diameter, with a trapdoor beside it.

Someone, please??

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v164/photo04/personal/chimney1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v164/photo04/personal/chimney2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v164/photo04/personal/chimney3.jpg

PS That's daylight at the top - 30 feet up!

[tim]

[supersprout]

tim, do you think it's an old bread oven missing its porthole door ???
It looks like it has a flattened base for the wood to go in and burn.
When the thing what red hot you would scrape the cinders out and pop the bread in :)
It seems a bit high up though! ::)

[tim]

Nice thought - but that's looking vertically up the chimney.

[supersprout]

 :-[ ::)
any hooks? thinks: smoking hams ...

never give up, never surrender

;D

[tim]

Never!

Another nice thought! No. And why the trapdoor beside??

[supersprout]

:P
Priest hole? (for a thin priest)? 8)

[tim]

Funny - Pat offered that one!! Rather warm though?

[trojanrabbit]

Could it be some sort of damper or shut-off for the flew? Maybe the small hatch wasn't for a cover, rather a pass-through for some sort of lever or pulley arrangement.

Also I note some sort of contraption just below ceiling level in the first pic apparently fixed to or disappearing through the wall, but can't make head nor tail of it.

[ACE]

In one old house that I had we had an old burner with a trap door in the flu

Whe the trap was opened it covered the flu from the burner, then you could clean the chimney from the flap door without all the soot falling into the burner.

[tim]

Two brilliant leads!

Try this?

[Robert_Brenchley]

If there was a cooker or somethng below it, then the flue from that could have fitted into the ring. In that case, the trapdoor would have been needed to sweep the chimney. If the solid fuel stove we had once is anything to go by, the flue would probably have had a separate trapdoor for cleaning that section.

[tim]

Indeed, Robert - but a 20" ring??

There was an old fireplace behind the Rayburn, but God knows what was behind that - just can't recall.