Londinium Lite

AROUND THE HOME – LONDON’S HOMESTYLE FEATURES:

AD240 Hot stuff!

Mosaic room from the Roman gallery
Just feel the constant warmth with the new-style heating

If you’re looking for a smart heating solution and style statement in one, look no further…

As house styles change, so do the heating solutions. Gone are the portable braziers in the upmarket houses. New underfloor heating keeps your rooms consistently warm, while the latest retro heaters add style and warmth to older houses that cannot be converted.

We look at the modern trends in Londinium for those that can afford the upgrade and alternative systems for those that can’t.
Roman underfloor heating plan
Heating hidden from view but cleverly engineered

Ideal for maintaining background heat

The new trend is for underfloor heating, a structural feature of the newer stone-built houses. The floors are suspended on columns of clay tiles or channels are dug before the floor is laid to allow hot air to flow under the floors. Some houses even have square hollow clay pipes set into the walls to allow the hot air to rise up inside the walls.

By necessity the floors in these heated rooms have superior flooring – stone and ceramic mosaic tesserae are the norm - to allow an even spread of heat.

Energy efficient

This new system can be maintained 24/7 at a constant temperature. Your slaves can keep the fire burning in the external furnace and once the stone walls and mosaic floors have warmed up, the fire can be stoked up and maintained.

This heating is easy to maintain and economical – no longer the dread of winter chills.

Replica Roman brazier
Portable braziers leave rooms feeling cosy

Or go retro and feel the heat

Living in an older house, unsuitable for conversion? Then add style and warmth to your home with the latest retro heaters. These wood or charcoal-burning braziers are portable and are ideal for fast top-up heating.

They can be moved from room to room but beware the scorch marks that they can leave on the floor, if left for too long – definitely more suited to plain floor surfaces than any fancy mosaic floor, which may have been an expensive outlay.
Roman cooking area recreated
A combination heater and cooker

Poor relation

Those less fortunate still rely on the in-built hearths in their living rooms to provide both heating and cooking facilities. This usually leads to inhabitants living and sleeping in the same room, making use of the residual heat during the night.

A brazier enables them to move the heat beyond the main room.

 

 

 

 

 

THE FACTS BEHIND THE STORY

  • Underfloor heating was constructed by either digging channels under the floor or by supporting the floor on columns of small square tiles. This allowed hot air to flow under the floor and sometimes up the walls inside clay channels.
  • Such heating is found associated with tessellated mosaic floors with small tiled arch furnaces for burning wood or charcoal sited outside the building. The nearer to the furnace, the warmer the room.
  • The only evidence for a metal brazier is a surviving bronze foot but there are plenty of scorch marks left on floors indicating where they had been used.
  • Numerous excavations have shown that poorer houses had hearths either set into the floor or as tile-built structures that would have been used for both cooking and heating.

[Londinium Lite is a fictional newspaper with a factual base]

For further information, see Heating in Home life and Heating in the Household catalogue.

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