I was at a restaurant outside of Harpers Ferry, WV this weekend and saw this fire place. My question is what would the two doors to the side be for?
I thought that at first but the one door is above the other and is fairly high to be reaching up there for wood.
I knew an old couple that lived in the old family farm house...they had a similar set up...in the upper right cabinet he always kept his whiskey and he would say 'just like my grand dad did'...I like to think it is for whiskey.
a lot depends on the internals- in some cases those were warming ovens or just a plain oven or as suggested the lower for fuel storage
If that was a cooking fireplace those cabinets/lockers may have stayed dry and held dry-cured meats and dry storage like beans and corn things. Nice tight doors likely kept mice out.
If it is chewable, nothing keeps those vermin out, Spent 2 hours last night digging a nest out of the eng. compartment of my diesel. this required more contortions than the avg. person is capable of, including me. The blue/gray haze in the shop had nothing to do with fuel burning. Even the springers were hiding.
Have you tried putting dryer sheets and or moth balls in your engine compartment? My GMC just sat for 3 months there is no indication of under the hood visitors... in the past, the chipmunks had taken up residence in the air cleaner when the truck sat for as little as a few days...
Years ago some friends of mine moved into a different house and their mason father built a huge new fireplace in their living room similar to that with doors. The bottom one was a large area for the main firewood. The top one was for kindling. Outside there were two doors also so they could load the wood from out there instead of carrying it through the house. They had pretty good doors on them both inside and out to keep the weather and critters out. It was a pretty elaborate fireplace and chimney even having their family initial laid in with a contrasting brick color. I figured he was wanting to showcase his masonary talents to drum up business. He was always pretty busy.
In Haverill Center here in NH, there are areas next to the fireplace where slaves would stay hidden and fed during the underground RR. Some were even meant to look like mini ovens, but had trap doors where they were fed.
