Smoke-Jack

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30278, 2 November 1963, Page 8

Smoke-Jack

I suppose I am one of the eery few people who know what a "smoke-jack” is and have seen and heard one in action. I happened to pass my schooldays in an old country house, built, I think, in the early eighteenth century at great cost and fitted with every convenience and •rnamrnt known at that time. The smoke-jack was one of these. It was a very ingenius device to keep the roast turning before the fire and replaced the older methods which were: (1) The man engaged foe the purpose ■nd (2) the “turn-spit” dog » • short-legged breed like ■ dachshund who was trained to run in a wheel and so keep the spit turning. The smoke-jack was built Into ■ flue; it had a flanged motor like toe propeller of ■n aeroplane which was kept in motion by the hot air passing up the flue and could be heard chugging away day and night; probably it still does that as toe house is still there and nothing would be gamed by destroying it

Incidentally, I have been told that toe roasting of meat before an open fire is certainly by far toe best method of cooking it. The smoke-jack was named in 1675. and. doubtless, was invented about that date.

I may add that this old home actually had a bathroom which was rare in those days. It was a grand affair about eight feet by five entered by a flight of six steps and hot water was conveyed to it through a very long line of leaden pipes. But in my time toe bath was never used because re’s had destroyed the pipes. Naturally toe bathroom contained a small statue of Psyche or Venus in toe nude. A vague tradition had it that Lady Russell, widow of Lord William Russell who suffered death for his pert in toe Ryehouse Plot in 1683, lived and died in a certain room in that house. If that was true toe house must have been built in the seventeeth century which seems to me improbable.