If that range has a water boiler in it, they were notorious for exploding!
These were of the `open type` (so called because the fire was open) and generally had a built in `copper` next to the fire with a lift up lid or flap to fill it with water....
You could boil water in it for washing clothes etc...
Some were also fitted with a tap at the front for filling buckets etc...common on cornish ranges...
The `kitchener` type ranges on the other hand using more efficient closed fireboxes...such as the `eagle` range were much more sophisticated beasts....
these had a `boot` boiler mounted just above (and to the back of) the fire....complex dampers and flue systems controlled where and how the heat from the fire was delivered...
For instance a rising heat is better for baking...so the flue for the baking oven was at the top which meant the hot gas from the fire had to rise up around the oven casting before venting up the flue...giving a rising heat
roasting required a penetrative heat.....and so the flues were arranged accordingly...
Much time and effort had been spent in the development of effective flue systems in the early 1800s so that by the time the `eagle` range was shown at the great exhibition of 1851...the product won several awards for inginuity.
They came at a price though....expensive to buy, maintain and run...kitcheners could consume upto 1/2 a ton of coal a day..
All this made them the preserve of the very rich such as the new emerging industrial classes who wanted to throw parties to show off their new found wealth and as such needed the aperatus to provide for large banquets etc....
Most of more modest means made do with open fires and the communal bakestone at the end of the street which was a common sight in poor industrial housing areas until well into the 20th centuary...
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