Chimney pots

Looking up at the rooflines in Saltaire is just as fascinating as looking at the buildings themselves. There must be as many different styles of chimney pots as there are houses. They don't look that big from ground level but I have two (as sculpture!) in my garden and they are nearly as high as my waist and a good foot across (ie: 30cm, for those that don't do old-fashioned measures). These particular pots are on the roof of Vicar's café (see my post of 22 September).

Originally the houses in Saltaire would have had coal-burning ranges for cooking, and coal or wood fires in the sitting rooms, and in some cases bedrooms too. Then it was decreed that people had to burn 'smokeless fuel', and anyway the hard work and dust entailed by real fires meant that most people bricked them up and installed gas fires and, eventually, central heating. I doubt there are many - if any - houses in Saltaire that now have working fireplaces. Mostly the chimneys just serve as flues for the gas fires.

I thought this was perhaps a relevant photo, as we wait to hear the outcome of the climate change talks in Copenhagen....