Introductory audio played when entering the room (as at Mar2018)
Welcome to the kitchen.
The present kitchen built in 1988 replicates the original kitchen which was demolished in the 1950s during the time when the cottage stood on its original site on Doncaster Road.
The Schramm kitchen follow the custom of the time when the kitchen was separated from the house. There was no door connecting the old kitchen with the rest of the house. The cooked meals had to be carried around the veranda and through the front door to the dining room. It was only a small room built, as it is now, at the end of the side verandah.
Often farm kitchens were large but Schramm was a teacher and meals were eaten in the dining room not the kitchen. Originally food was cooked over an open fire where the stove now stands. It was a cozy room warmed in the winter by the early model two fire stove - a predecessor of the one fire stove. To use the oven, they lit a fire at the bottom opening. Another fire was lit on top under a kettle or saucepan.
On the rear of the chimney and reached from outside is the bake oven where the family bread supply was baked. A fire was lit in the oven to heat the surrounding bricks. And, after the hot coals have been raked out, there was enough heat from the hot bricks to bake the bread.
Water was supplied from the well nearby by means of a hand pump. The well was filled with rain water from the roof of the house.
After Max Schramm closed his school in 1884, Kate cooked the family meals in wood stove which had been installed in the fireplace of the school room. The old kitchen and then became the boys room. On the small dresser sits the knife cleaner used to polish the blades of the table knives.
Source: Transcription from Audio Presentation installed in the Schramm's Cottage museum (2018)
The present kitchen built in 1988 replicates the original kitchen which was demolished in the 1950s during the time when the cottage stood on its original site on Doncaster Road.
The Schramm kitchen follow the custom of the time when the kitchen was separated from the house. There was no door connecting the old kitchen with the rest of the house. The cooked meals had to be carried around the veranda and through the front door to the dining room. It was only a small room built, as it is now, at the end of the side verandah.
Often farm kitchens were large but Schramm was a teacher and meals were eaten in the dining room not the kitchen. Originally food was cooked over an open fire where the stove now stands. It was a cozy room warmed in the winter by the early model two fire stove - a predecessor of the one fire stove. To use the oven, they lit a fire at the bottom opening. Another fire was lit on top under a kettle or saucepan.
On the rear of the chimney and reached from outside is the bake oven where the family bread supply was baked. A fire was lit in the oven to heat the surrounding bricks. And, after the hot coals have been raked out, there was enough heat from the hot bricks to bake the bread.
Water was supplied from the well nearby by means of a hand pump. The well was filled with rain water from the roof of the house.
After Max Schramm closed his school in 1884, Kate cooked the family meals in wood stove which had been installed in the fireplace of the school room. The old kitchen and then became the boys room. On the small dresser sits the knife cleaner used to polish the blades of the table knives.
Source: Transcription from Audio Presentation installed in the Schramm's Cottage museum (2018)
Schramm's Kitchen
Kate and Max Schramm built their new house with a spirit of well-being. They sold their old school house with its cramped living conditions and, with a legacy from Kate’s father, planned to build a spacious, comfortable home.
In the 1870s, when Schramm’s Cottage was built, the colonial oven was new. After cooking over an open fire, the new stove was welcomed by the housewife. It had two fires, one underneath to heat the oven for baking and one on top to heat pots, kettles, boilers or a skillet. For this reason the colonial oven was called a two-fire stove. Therefore, later, when the popular kitchen stove was introduced it was called a one-fire stove.
The bread oven was built on the outside of the chimney to keep smoke out of the kitchen, for it was warmed by lighting a fire inside the oven. It had no flue and the door was left slightly ajar to let air to the fire and to let smoke out. The fire was lit with light wood and took about an hour to heat up. When hot the ashes were raked out and the oven swept clean. The trick was to have the dough ready when the oven was hot enough.
All food cooked in Schramm’s kitchen had to be carried along the verandah, through the front door and down the passage to the dining room. The precept that houses should be built for convenience did not exist then.
The maid’s room at the rear of the kitchen was never used for a maid because it was soon needed for the boys’ bedroom. When meals began to be cooked in the fireplace in the school room the kitchen was taken over as another bedroom for the four boys. Eventually a one-fire stove was installed in the schoolroom and it was forgotten that the boys’ room had once been a kitchen.
We recently found the bake oven in an old hut being demolished in George Street. The original hut was build by Wilhelm Zander in 1858. In the 1890s, Sykes moved into it. Mrs Sykes is remembered for selling lollies to East Doncaster school children at her shop in Blackburn Road. The colonial oven had been in Mrs Serpell’s kitchen when the house was built in Doncaster Road near Williamsons Road.
The Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society wishes to acknowledge financial assistance from the Australian Bi-centennial Authority and the City of Doncaster and Templestowe.
Source: Information Panel in Schramm's Kitchen, June 2021
Panel on Verandah wall of Schramm's Cottage:
No comments:
Post a Comment