The Hearth of the Home
Some parts of an old home become the heart of everything.
Placed within the center of the cottage is an old brick fireplace. It isn’t particularly large or grand. Built in 1945, it could provide warmth during the colder months and even a secondary cooking source when needed. It sits against one wall beneath a simple mantel, surrounded by the familiar details of a sitting room that has not changed much over the past eighty years.
Even though it is not large or ornate, you notice it as soon as you walk through the front door.
There is something about a fireplace in an old cottage that immediately draws you toward it. Even empty and unlit, it seems to suggest what a room is supposed to feel like. But it wasn’t until we began living here that we understood just how naturally everything seems to gather around it.
The fireplace feels as though it belongs in an old Cape cottage, surrounded by comfortable furnishings and old, dusty books.
Without ever deciding that it should be, the fireplace became the heart of the sitting room.
Since 1945
When Hurcil built the cottage in 1945, the fireplace was part of the house from the beginning.
The wood-burning surround has held countless fires, evident in the layers of soot baked into the terra-cotta tiles. One can only imagine eighty years of autumn leaves decorating the mantel and holiday stockings hung by the fire.
Generations of life have unfolded around the same bricks and tiles we see today.
For the first time since moving into The Cottage, we began watching the hearth come alive with the changing season.
The light through the windows became softer. Blankets returned to the furniture. Books seemed to linger a little longer beside the chairs. Outside, the dogwoods began their transformation, while inside, the hearth was graced with warmth once again.
Eighty-one autumns later, the hearth is still at the center of everyday life at The Cottage.
Soon there will be colder evenings. The leaves outside the windows will disappear. Autumn will eventually give way to winter, and another season will begin.
But for now, there are books on the shelves, blankets within reach, and an old fireplace at the center of the room.
It has been part of this cottage much longer than we have.
We are simply the next family to gather around it.
And perhaps that is why, after eighty-one years, the hearth still feels like the heart of the home.
Next Week
Some of the most recognizable details in The Cottage didn’t begin here in 1945.
Next week, we return to The First Renovation and one of the choices that helped give the sitting room the character it has today.
The First Renovation Series | Windy Blue Bookcases
