Mondays at the Manor - How to keep cool

Being in the middle of a hot spell, it brings to mind what our ancestors, and the Backus family, did to keep cool in the summer. How was the house kept cool without air conditioning or fans? What did the family do to warm their house during the very cold winters? Let’s see if the answers can be found.

The Backus-Page house was built in 1850 from bricks made on site. There are approximately 72,000 Adobe bricks. The walls are three to four bricks thick in the outer walls and two to four bricks thick in the inner walls. While the bricks were dense and would not have retain heat or cool air, there was space between them, and when covered with plaster in the interior, provided a nice barrier to the outside temperature.

During the summer months, the cooking would have been done in the summer kitchen. This was originally located on the back wall of the house. (When you visit, you can see the outline above the white on the rear wall). All of the windows would have been opened, and will all of the beautiful shade trees, there would have been a nice breeze. In addition, the clothing worn in the summer would have been cotton or linen. Natural fibres breath, allowing for air to flow. The several layers worn by both the men and women provided natural insulation as the air is caught between the layers. Whenever possible, work would have been done out doors, with a mid-afternoon break when the sun was at its highest.

In the winter, there were several heat sources in the home.  The most obvious would have been the large wood stove in the kitchen. Since preparing meals was a very involved task, the stove would have been heated all day. The parlour also had a fireplace which would have been lit later in the day. The dining room contains the second fireplace, and a hook in the top suggests that this fireplace would have been the main food preparation area until the stove arrived. The dining room shares a fireplace with the small room behind it. Since heat rises, these four spaces would have provided heat for the house. The bedrooms had no heat sources of their own, but there is an example of a bed warmer in our large bedroom. The family would have been up and dressed quickly in the morning to allow them to get downstairs where the warmth would be.

  

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