Yes, thatch but not a thatched animal this time – ‘It’s thatch Jim but not as we know it”!

It’s a World War 2 thatched Short Stirling four engine heavy bomber. The first of the four engine heavies prior to the Lancaster and Halifax and the scourge of Nazi Germany. Its appearance on a barn roof in Little Thurlow is undoubtedly because of the nearby airfield at Wratting Common which flew the Stirling, along with its parent station at Stradishall (now HMP Highpoint). Many of the old war time building still remain at the site of the airfield including two large hangers and the local roads follow the course of the old runsways.

RAF Wratting Common was a Bomber Command airfield built comparatively late in the war (1942), and was operational from 1943 to 1945. It is situated between the villages of West Wickham, West Wratting, Carlton/Weston Colville and Withersfield, close to the Cambridgeshire border with Suffolk. For much of this period, approximately 1,500 personnel were stationed here.

In the early stages of its life the airfield was called RAF West Wickham. However it was renamed in August 1943 as RAF Wratting Common to avoid confusion with another similarly named RAF station, possibly High Wycombe (Bomber Command HQ).

The station hosted one squadron at a time, but during the war three different squadrons used the base. Between May and October 1943 it was the home to 90 (XC) Squadron, who flew Stirling bombers. XC Squadron then moved elsewhere and RAF Wratting Common became the home for 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit, a training Squadron for bomber crews. Then in November 1944 1651 RAF Wratting Common became the home to 195 Squadron, equipped with AVRO Lancaster bombers for an aggressive operational role. Many bombing missions over Germany were mounted from the base in the last months of the war.

In the closing days of the war, Lancasters from RAF Wratting Common took part in non-combat missions, notably operation MANNA in April/May 1945 in which the bombers were used to airdrop food to the starving Dutch. Later the unit took part in operation EXODUS, in which allied prisoners of war were returned home from previously occupied Europe.

In August 1945 195 Squadron was disbanded. The station was used for various air training tasks by Transport Command for another year or so. The last aircraft left the base in June 1946 and the land has since returned to its original, rural, use. Most of the site is part of Thurlow Estates, owned by the Vestey family.

During the war bomber losses in operations flown from Wratting Common totalled 43 of which 34 were Stirlings.

The Short Stirling was a British four-engined heavy bomber of the Second World War. It has the distinction of being the first four-engined bomber to be introduced into service with the Royal Air Force (RAF).

The Stirling was designed during the late 1930s by Short Brothers to conform with the requirements laid out in Air Ministry Specification B.12/36. Prior to this, the RAF had been primarily interested in developing increasingly capable twin-engined bombers but had been persuaded to investigate a prospective four-engined bomber as a result of promising foreign developments in the field. Out of the submissions made to the specification, Supermarine proposed the Type 317 which was viewed as the favourite, while Short’s submission, named the S.29, was selected as an alternative. When the preferred Type 317 had to be abandoned, the S.29, which later received the name Stirling, proceeded to production.

During early 1941, the Stirling entered squadron service. During its use as a bomber, pilots praised the type for its ability to out-turn enemy night fighters and its favourable handling characteristics, while the altitude ceiling was often a subject of criticism. The Stirling had a relatively brief operational career as a bomber before being relegated to second line duties from late 1943. This was due to the increasing availability of the more capable Handley Page Halifax and Avro Lancaster, which took over the strategic bombing of Germany. Decisions by the Air Ministry on certain performance requirements, such as to restrict the wingspan of the aircraft to 100 feet, had played a role in limiting the Stirling’s performance; these restrictive demands had not been placed upon the Halifax and Lancaster bombers.

During its later service, the Stirling was used for mining German ports; new and converted aircraft also flew as glider tugs and supply aircraft during the Allied invasion of Europe during 1944–1945. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the type was rapidly withdrawn from RAF service, having been replaced in the transport role by the Avro York, a derivative of the Lancaster that had previously displaced it from the bomber role. A handful of ex-military Stirlings were rebuilt for the civil market.

I had an extra pair of hands for a day this week, when my youngest daughter Katie had to do work experience. Apparently, it is now part of the national curriculum that in year 10 all school children have to do a day’s work experience. Katie naturally wanted to spend a day with her dad getting a bit sooty! And who can blame her! All joking aside Katie did very well, she worked hard all day and I never heard one moan or word of complaint. Katie worked hard all day, helping to fetch and carry the equipment, and she was excellent when talking with the customers who all seemed to take to her. At the end of the day Katie said she had enjoyed her time chimney sweeping, but that she thought it was not a career option she wished to pursue!

I have chosen to do this week’s blog on this very unusual stove that I swept at an address in Sturma this week. As you can see from the photo that it is a most striking and unusual stove. It has a cooking compartment at the top of the stove which the customer told me that they regularly use to roast joints of meat and to bake fresh bread. The stove itself purely a wood burning stove.

Research on the internet shows that Rika are an Austrian company:

RIKA Innovative Ofentechnik GmbH is one of the leading suppliers of high-quality wood-burning stoves and is market leader for pellet stoves in the German-speaking countries.

RIKA was founded 1951 in Micheldorf in Upper Austria and is run by Karl Riener as a family business in the second generation. The passion for stoves is really about creating quality of life. The claim to continuously set new benchmarks in terms of quality, innovation and design, leads to the continuous further development of stoves in terms of their form and function, resulting in a wide product portfolio of wood-burning, pellet and combi stoves, heating inserts and design fireplaces. With many years of experience in stove manufacturing and product innovations, such as the first pellet stove in Europe, RIKA is regarded as pioneer of the industry. With the “Green Innovation” seal, RIKA has made an undertaking in the interests of sustainability to voluntarily comply with all requirements and be certified under the strictest international regulations. RIKA has received many awards such as the most significant environment award on the global stage: the Energy Globe Award. The number of employees has risen to 300 over the years and the network of dealers spans across many countries.

https://www.rika.eu/company

The stove was installed by Nick Buckenham at Cut Maple Stoves, Sturmer Road, New England CO9 4BB

01440788788

07817581296

Email: cutmaple@fireplacesetc.co.uk

https://www.fireplacesetc.co.uk/stoves

I must say casting an eye over the installation, Cut Maple had made a fantastic job of it. The customer told me that it was some of the best money he had ever spent and very reasonable at that considering the work done.

Here is another example of industrial scale sweeping that I have undertaken! This is a Gilles Biomass Boiler that was in an outbuilding on a large estate, supplying heating and hot water to all parts of the estate – The boiler is used to supply heat and hot water to the rather large main residence, some industrial buildings on the site and to a number of estate cottages. It is not a make of Biomass Boiler that I had encountered before. This biomass boiler runs by burning specially made wood pellets; they are a small pellet of compressed wood shavings. Apparently they are designed in such a way to optimize the burn and efficiency of the biomass boiler. Again, as in the previous blog to do with biomass boiler sweeping, the wood chips are stored in a hopper in a very large barn, which is directly adjacent to the shed that houses the biomass boiler. The pellets are gradually fed into the biomass boiler by a large Archimedes screw and the hopper is periodically topped up by fresh deliveries of pellets. The boiler chimney was rather large eight meters in height and had a diameter of 38cm; I swept it using manual rods and brushes; somewhat surprisingly the chimney was not particularly dirty, probably due to the very efficient operation of the biomass boiler. Fascinating stuff!

Using Google I found that Gilles: was founded in 1992 in Gmunden Austria. In the year 2000, GILLES became one of the first manufacturers of biomass heating systems to be honoured with the Austrian eco-mark and a little later, by the state of Upper Austria with the state’s coat-of-arms. In 2007, the company was taken over by the new owners, led by Wolfgang Krämer. There UK base is in Hereford 01432513777 – https://www.gilles.at/en

A tale from close to home this week when I removed a bird’s nest from a flue I was seeping for an M Design stove in a house in Radwinter. It’s always the way, last job of the day on a Saturday, after a busy day sweeping and you encounter a birds nest up a flue! Fortunately this one was only made of moss dry grass and small twigs and I was able to break it up easily using 10mm power sweeping rods and a bullet strimmer sweeping head. The only problem was that all the broken up nest material caught in the flue mouth were the primary control vent was situated (you can just see it at the top of the photograph of the interior of the stove. This meant that I had to reach up into the bottom of the flue and drag out the nest material past the flue vent. Rather a dirty job, but someone has to do it! Where’s my apprentice Claire when I need her!

I don’t see many of these M Design Wood-Burning stoves, looking at their website they seem to be bespoke and rather expensive. Their website provides a short history of the company:

“In 1993 Bart Goovaerts opened a smart showroom, 1000 m² in size, for ornamental fireplaces and inset stoves where customers looking for high quality products could find all the main brands.

In addition to being a managing director who always looks to the future and thanks to the fact he studied automation and then architecture, Bart Goovaerts is someone who aims for perfection in the area of design and technology and, above all, in the combustion processes in inset and designer stoves.

In 2001 he started developing his own stoves. After a year of looking for the best way to do things and trying things out, his passion finally led to the development of a stove with a revolutionary combustion system, which had never been seen before, combined with an optimized air cleaning system.

In the same year, 2002, he also founded M-Design BVBA in order to market and sell the stoves he invented. His years of experience in installing and selling inset stoves and open fireplaces had provided him with the skills and experience necessary to design a perfect stove himself, the two most important criteria for which are the design itself and ease of use. And so the first LUNA models were created, shortly followed by the VENUS inset stoves.

In 2005 an improved version of the Luna was produced: the LUNA GOLD Collection.

At Batibouw 2007 the new Luna gas-fired models were M-Design’s biggest hit of the fair, attracting all the attention and, hardly surprisingly, outselling all the other stoves.

Since then M-Design has continued to grow, thanks to serious investment in marketing, among other things. In 2013 the company’s success increased further when it introduced the brand new DIAMOND collection: ecological, gas- and wood-fired stoves that have a bright future when it comes to sustainability, that are energy efficient and easy to use and that go hand in hand with nature”.

I recently swept this very unusual and attractive Green Enamel Godin Stove at an address in Thaxted. I think these antique stoves are rather beautiful and in the right setting they can really add to the ambiance of a room and add value to a property. This stove was an admirable finishing touch to a large garden room. I’m sure its presence means that the garden room can be enjoyed by the family all year round! Looking on the internet they really hold their value and are now quite sought after.

The Godin stove is the foundational of the history of French stove making, and indeed to the history of domestic stove manufacturing as a whole. Before the era of cast iron, domestic fuel took on many forms from the open hearth fire to the clay or stone kiln, but then the 23 year Andrea Godin (pictured Below), started his business in 1840 making fireplaces in a shed in the centre of Thierache with a loan of about 4,000 francs from his parent, this quickly became too small.

The works soon moved to Guise where he started employing 30 people and in spite of fierce competition his business grew rapidly. The most important reason for this was his innovation. Godin applied for many patents for his products and concentrated on continually improving them both aesthetically and technically, making antique stoves from his era especially valuable.
Godin became a figure to know in French industrial relations. Godin offered his employees living wages or higher at a time of economic downturn, hired from a small pool of people in one geographical area reducing turn over and improving employee reliability.

By the end of the 1900’s, with a further 2000 employees, Godin was dominating the European stove market. Stove designs became ornate and stylised with the advent of the 20^th century and the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements. Godin’s stove design in this period did not become as elaborate and decorative as some other companies, such as Deville and Rosières, etc. But the stoves they produced in the early 20^th century were, as always with Godin, extremely efficient and featured superb quality enamelling. Some of these original designs are still in production in the Godin factory today, laying testament to their design and efficiency.

A bit of a funny story this week. I recently swept a chimney to an open fire for Intercounty Lettings in Shepreth near Royston. Apparently, the property had been empty for quite sometime before being let out; consequently the day I attended the house was full of other trades people doing various jobs to get the house ready for occupancy. Some of these were intrigued to see what I was doing as they had never observed a chimney being swept before. They all came running into the lounge when I shouted that I had found money up the chimney, but were immediately disappointed when they found that it was chocolate money, that was a bit old and mankey at that! I’m guessing that at some time a young child had spent a happy moment posting his chocolate coins up the chimney. Perhaps they were meant ad a gift for Father Christmas? Who Knows?

Something just a little bit different this week, a customer’s house name, but a name with a difference. This unusual name was on a customer’s house where I swept recently in Halstead. I was baffled by the house name as it did not appear to be in English, but the clue to its meaning is in the picture of a chimney on the house sign. Perplexed I asked the customer what it was all about. The lady who originates from Scotland informed me that it was a Scottish good luck saying, and not as I had thought, about smelly chimney! The Scottish saying goes “lang may your lum reek”; which means long may your chimney smoke or may you have a long and contented life. Lum being Scottish for chimney. It was originally a traditional Hogmanay toast, but has passed into English usage in Scotland. It is used primarily as a toast when drinking or as a farewell. So in many ways this saying is much more than just about a smokey chimney!

I very recently found this bird of prey up a large inglenook chimney in a thatched property at Tindon End. Looking at the colouring and plumage of the bird, I think it was a Kestral, but I could be wrong, I’m no ornithologist! As can be seen in the photo the bird was brown and mottled black on its top surface and had black wing tips. What I couldn’t understand was why having got into the chimney the bird didn’t just simply fly out again. The chimney was very large all the way up, about 6’ x 4’ and wasn’t particularly tall at about seven and a half metres. I found the poor thing just lying on top of the register plate close to one of the inspection hatches. I imagine that it must have been ill or injured and had flown into the chimney for safety and simply died there; but this is merely speculation on my behalf.

A search of the internet reveals a number of strange things found up chimneys, some of which are humorous, interesting and even lucrative!

Cash

In the UK, police found £871,495 up the chimney stack in the Bradford home of Baber Bashir, a conman who had acquired his ill-gotten gains largely through an unspecified fraud. Found tucked in his chimney, the cash amounted to just around $1.5 million USD by today’s standards, making it easily the most valuable chimney in Bradford. That is, before all the money was confiscated by the police and Mr. Bashir and company were locked up for their crimes.

Birds

Researchers at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario made a strange discovery in a decommissioned Chimney in a campus building – over fifty years’ worth of bird droppings. Researchers dug in (literally) and found that the bird droppings showed sharp decreases in beetles in the diet of insect-eating birds that frequented the chimney. The dramatic decline of the beetle population was due to the use of the infamous chemical DDT, which the beetles were especially susceptible to.  This, in turn, lead to a decrease of the population of the swifts that used the chimney, further damaging the already notorious reputation of the DDT compound.

Cats & Shoes

On the other side of the world in Australia, you might not be too surprised to find a dead cat or a shoe inside your chimney. Reason being, early Australian settlers were very superstitious, and often would hide either a shoe or, in some more morbid cases, a dead cat inside their chimneys. The practice is believed to have come to Australia by way Britain from an ancient Roman practice to ward off evil spirits. Homeowners put these totems in parts of their homes where evil spirits might lurk.

A Burglar

Believe it or not, Santa can serve as an inspiration for more than just altruism. In Georgia, an Atlanta area teen took a page out of the red-suited man’s book when he tried to burglarize a home by slipping through the chimney. After spending ten hours overnight trapped in the flue, he finally cried for help and caught the attention of a neighbor who called the police. After getting pulled from the flue, he went from out of the fire and into the frying pan as he was immediately arrested. To add fuel to the flames, the would-be-burglar made another poor choice by providing police with a false name when they arrested him, really putting him in ‘hot water’.

A Letter to Santa Written in 1912

On a lighter note on the Santa side of things, a Dublin, Ireland man found a note to Santa when cleaning his fireplace; but not just any note. This note, believed to be penned by Hannah and Alfred Howard, somehow survived 100 years on a shelf on the inside of the fireplace. Despite constant use of the fireplace throughout that entire time, the letter has only a small amount of burn damage and is in remarkably good condition. Featuring a detailed, if terse, list of toys and treats the two children desired, it ends with a friendly ‘Good Luck’, and has a few illustrations to go along with it.

A Dead Body

There’s no shortage of bodies found in chimneys, as they seem to make a good hiding place for less-savory characters, but this particular body has a pretty interesting history behind it. Joseph Schexnider, a former National Guard serviceman, was due to appear in court in 1984, an appearance that he never made. Known in his family for frequently skipping town, they thought little of it. For twenty-seven years, they presumed that he was on the lamb from charges of possession of a stolen vehicle. Then, in May of 2011, the local bank began renovating it’s second floor, previously used only as storage space. Inside the chimney they discovered Joseph’s remains. He hadn’t suffered any broken bones or apparent trauma, so investigators ruled the death accidental.

I swept this unusual but rather attractive French Mirus Wood-Burning Stove very recently in a property in Mill Lane Saffron Walden. The stove is unusual in that the fuel is not loaded from the front, but from a side door. Looking on the web it is easy to see that these antique Mirus stoves are very sought after and achieve very high prices when sold on. It would appear that Mirus were making stoves in the early part of the 20^th Century, a number I looked at were made in the 1920’s.

Unfortunately for the customer I had to condemn the installation as being unsafe to use, as can be observed from the photos, the stove pipe was not securely fixed to the bottom of the liner. As can be seen the stove pipe had been secured using a jubilee clip, when this had failed a piece of chicken wire had been used. This is always a difficult moment for the sweep, who must tactfully point out the defects and negotiate a solution. In this instance the customer was very reasonable and could immediately see the fault and recognize that it required remedying. The customer added that it wasn’t the first problem he had encountered since buying the property, adding that the previous occupier from whom he had bought the property was a ‘bit of a bodger’!

I suggested when the customer has the repair undertaken, he have the elbow removed and replaced with a T-Piece which will collect any soot coming down the flue and to have a sweeping hatch fitted to the stove pipe.