Page 40 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

The dealers assured us this would all be needed. This chimney had to be sufficiently tall to
clear the adjacent roofs and allow a clear ‘draw’ of the smoke, ensure the boiler burned
properly. This detailed technical information was a steep learning curve and it was not
realised at the time how all this new knowledge would stand us in good stead in later years
as we moved home and needed to establish wood burning stoves and cookers in our
future homes both in the UK and in France.
The installation was entrusted to an Irish plumber, a friend of a friend, who lived at Old
Leake some 15 miles east. Joe was an indeterminate age, certainly older than Ruth or
myself, just one of those folk who always seemed middle aged and never grew any older.
His wife worked at the local Pilgrim General Hospital at the same time that Ruth was
working as Theatre Sister in the same establishment. The challenge of this unusual
conversion Joe just took in his stride.

ANOTHER CHIMNEY
Perhaps it was his Irish ancestry, but nothing seemed to be beyond his ability. In fact to
digress a little here, we had cause to be thankful to Joe a year or two later when some
bricks fell out of the inside of the sitting room chimney. This typically ‘Georgian’ room had
a quite lovely large basket fireplace with attractive cast iron surround, we had wondered
for some little time why when the fire was always lit, smoke seemed to be increasingly
puthering out from around the corner window arrangement facing out on to the garden and
just where the window frame joined the chimney breast! Eventually we could ignore this
fact no longer as the wooden window frame began to discolour with excessive heat!

Joe was called in and the general decision was to insert a wide chimney liner down from
the top of the chimney and seal it at the bottom with a sheet of heat proof material. The
extra problem to overcome this time was the fact that the chimney stack was the highest in
the entire house. It was at the south side where the house looked over the walled garden
and terminus of the navigable land drain system with access to Boston. Many times I wish
I had had a camera to record that event. Joe mounted various different ladders to access
the very top of the chimney which reached over 40 feet in height.

(Picture from the internet of similar installation....high up!)
A FURTHER CHIMNEY
I had actually accessed the Kitchen chimney a year or two previously when we finally
decided to use the wood burner cooker and found the top of this chimney completely
‘sealed’ by slate, cemented over the top, to keep weather out! Thinking the task of a

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