[Sca-cooks] Hampton Court copper kettle

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Tue Dec 5 03:25:02 PST 2006


On Dec 5, 2006, at 2:25 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Maire mentioned:
> <<< The most memorable piece I recall was this absolutely massive,
> huge copper
> boiling kettle that was quite a bit taller than I am, and which people
> needed to use these little built-in stairs to access the top of. >>>
>
> The stairs were built into the copper kettle? Or do you mean the site
> had some extra stairs built so the tourists could look into the  
> kettle?

Or maybe the design of the manor included stairs next to the kettle  
so the original cooks/brewers/generic fire users could access it?

> Why would they need that large of a kettle? What would they have used
> it for? Although it sounds like it would make a nifty hot tub.

If it were essentially the hot water heater for a large house (in  
some ways not unlike the gas or oil-heated hot water heater you might  
find in the basement of a large house today), I'd expect it to be  
huge, especially in a house without central heating and at least  
sometimes housing, possibly, over a hundred residents and staffers.  
It's conceivable that this hot water was used for bathing and laundry  
as well as cooking, isn't it?

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04





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