The pot-hook is of great antiquity, and belongs to days when man first learned to cook his food. Frequently in this country early examples are dug up. There are fine specimens to be seen of the late Celtic period at the Owens College Museum, at the Northampton Museum, at the Liverpool Museum, at the Pitt Rivers Museum at Farnham, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and elsewhere.
"Pot-hooks and hangers" is an English phrase denoting the beginning of things academic, and the French phrase pendre la crémaillère (literally to hang the pot-hook) is used to-day in reference to what we term a "house-warming" party on settling in a new abode.
Another interesting cottage treasure is the cake-baker. This was a kind of thick frying-pan having a lid, which protected the dough from the heat when it was held over the smouldering ashes. The tops of these are often incised with quaint patterns, the impress of which appears on the cake.
Kettle-trivets are sometimes found in cottages, possibly relics from better houses or having belonged to the more prosperous farmer. They are not wholly of iron, being partly of brass. The specimen illustrated (p. [291]) is of late eighteenth-century days.
The Warming-pan.—There is an especial charm in the old brass warming-pan of the farmhouse and the treasured highly-polished ornament of many a proud cottager to-day. Many modern-made warming-pans from Holland and elsewhere have found their way into the possession of unsuspecting collectors. But fine old English warming-pans are interesting, and summon up memories of careful housewives and well-aired lavender-smelling sheets in ancient old-world inns. On fine examples inscriptions may be found, and the incised work of the pattern on the brass covers is often individual in character.
Of the examples illustrated (p. [307]) one has an incised inscription around the edge, "The Lord only is my portion." The other has a dotted geometrical pattern with a star-like design of conventional floral incised work.
It is unfortunate that the diligence of the housewife has often obliterated much of the fine work of some of these designs. The warming-pan offers in itself a complete field for the collector. He can compare the work of seventeenth-century Dutch examples, with their quaint religious inscriptions and their finely embossed and engraved ornamentation, with English specimens of the same date. That the warming-pan was in use in Elizabethan days is proved by references in Shakespeare. It has a long history, from Sir John Falstaff, when Bardolph was bidden to put his face between the sheets and do the office of a warming-pan, to Mr. Pickwick—to quote Sergeant Buzfuz, "Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan—the warming-pan! Why, gentlemen, who does trouble himself about a warming-pan?"
Sussex Firebacks.—The fireback was usually part of the cottager's belongings, though perhaps only one would figure in his house, where possibly his only hearth was in his living-room.
These were cast and forged in various parts of the country, and large numbers appear to have been made in Sussex, which is, or rather was, the greatest hunting-ground for good specimens of cottagers' ironwork. Some highly interesting specimens of these are to be herein illustrated.
The records of the Sussex iron industry go back to a very early date, and the town of Lewes, in the thirteenth century, raised taxes by charging a toll on every cartload of iron admitted. Under Edward III. the Sussex ironworks provided three thousand horseshoes and twenty-nine thousand nails for the English army in its campaign in Scotland. The local rhyme—