ABSTRACT
The fixtures and fittings of a nineteenth-century home varied according to the house size, style and location. Whereas items such as stoves, grates, boilers, coppers, dressers and built-in woodwork were seen as fixtures, other items, such as screens and arches, inglenooks and cosy corners, as well as overdoors, dadoes, architraves, brass-work locks, bells, etc., might well be classed as fittings. The distinction might be between those items put into the house when built being fixtures and items added later by owners or tenants being fittings. For Robert Edis writing in 1881, the fixtures, included ‘such as mantels and stoves, hanging closets in bedrooms, shelving, built-up buffets, and other special joiners’ work’, which he felt ‘may well and economically take the place of the more moveable and expensive articles of furniture’. The texts that follow refer to differing aspects of house woodwork and fittings.
