The focus of our homes for centuries, the era of the fireplace is coming to an end

Kya deLongchamps offers her favourite, warming fixes for the flue-free living-room

Chimneys are simply disappearing as a standard part of a house’s external envelope. Pic: iStock

Having served as the primal and primary focus of our main living spaces for centuries, has the fire finally gone out at home? 

Many hearths have sunk into decorous nostalgia. Even slammed up in stoves, many real flame fires are rarely lit in homes with a BER over a B2 and great CH. Every passive level house that I have reviewed over the past five years, includes a tiny Scandinavian style fire-box, worth of a wendy-house, a knot on the end of a piece of string, dwarfed by the stovepipe, and dusty with disuse.