CENTRAL HEATING 1000 YEARS AGO.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 177, 28 July 1928, Page 6 (Supplement)

CENTRAL HEATING 1000 YEARS AGO.

Modern people pride themselves on their home comforts, and domestic arrangements, and think with pity of those who lived in the cheerless homes of the days gone by. But discoveries are occasionally made which prove that i the folk of earlier days were not so backward as we thought they were. We think of central heating as a modern idea, and would be surprised to learn it was known, or in use, hundreds of years ago. Yet it has not long since been discovered to have been iii use nearly one thousand years ago in the old Scandinavian castle of Glimmingehus one of the most interesting seats of the old nobility of Sweden, in spite of its forbidding exterior. Recent discoveries made here by Swedish archaeolgists have shown that the northern people of old did not lead such Spartan lives as we thought they did, and they knew what comfort meant, more than we -did in this country in those days of long ago. It was found that the kitchen arrangements were quite good, there were good ovens, water was laid on and conveyed away after use, there were large larders, and* special holders for the fire-irons, etc. The most extraordinary discovery, however, was an almost perfect system of central heating, tlic pipes being conveyed through the walls from the kitchen to the rooms above.