The stove in the lounge

The stove was here before us and will be here after. It was installed in 1962 by our grandfather, who bought it second-hand from a hotel in the town that was going over to oil, and it has been lit every winter evening since, which is about eleven thousand evenings.

What it does

It heats the lounge, which is the room everyone ends up in after dinner. On a still night it heats the corridor above it too, and the guests in rooms 5 and 6 know this and ask for those rooms in January. It dries boots, which stand in a row in front of it every evening in winter and are warm by morning.

The rules

1. Lit at four, by us. Not earlier, because the room does not need it, and not by guests, because the damper is a matter of practice.
2. Fed until eleven, by anyone. Guests are welcome to add a log. They are not welcome to add three, which is a lesson the lounge learned one January.
3. Never left with the door open. The stove draws hard and an open door is a room full of smoke in a minute.

The wood

Larch and beech, from our own wood above the inn, cut in spring and dried for two summers. A winter takes fourteen cords. It is stacked in the shed behind the kitchen, and the stack is a thing people photograph.

What we will do differently

A second basket of kindling by the lounge door, so nobody goes out into the snow for it at ten at night, which somebody does every winter.