Posted by Jock on October 31, 2008 at 23:05:35 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Beckfoot layout posted by Adam Quinan on October 30, 2008 at 20:16:53:
They would have burned whatever fuel was cheapest or most abundant.
While wood was certainly gathered and burnt by the less well off country dwellers in the 1930s, the early onset of the Industrial Revolution in the UK meant that houses built for the more affluent were constructed with the smaller grates and flues that were only really suitable for coal burning for at least a century earlier.
Most often the fireplaces were on exterior walls with four or so fireplaces feeding through separate flues to one chimney stack. It would be possible to have a fireplace on an interior wall but that would make the wall thicker than usual to accommodate the flue (at least around the flue) taking up room space.
Certainly the arrangement that you describe was quite common in town houses, but fireplaces on internal walls were also quite common in British practice. In fact it is difficult to envisage how Beckfoot's mobile chimney stacks could have worked if the Fireplaces were not on interior walls.
I've e-mailed you about the plumbing!