Now with three bedrooms, a tower room (currently fitted as a gym) and conservatory, it is for sale through GA Town & Country for pounds 250,000 (01243 826311).
The Quarter House, near Tenterden in Kent, is a Grade II listed thatched house with a couple of fireplaces wide enough for the stoutest Santa. Built of industrial brick, decorated with stilted arches, it was converted in 1984 when the water tank was removed. For sale through Jackson-Stops for pounds 485,000 (01823 325144). The Water Tower, a converted Victorian tower on the Craigweil Manor estate near Chichester, is on a footpath leading to the beach of Aldwick Bay.

Work was done in consultation with English Heritage and the drawing room has been fitted with a Hamstone Gothic style fireplace with brick lining The sitting room has a plain Victorian marble mantelpiece. It was put on the market as a derelict building last year, but has been restored and converted into four-bedroom home. Cast-iron inserts, baskets, firebacks and hearths all cost extra.For information on the National Fireplace Association, current yearbook 0800 521611 Solid Fuel Association 0800 600 000 Amazing Grates 0181 883 9590 The Antique Fireplace Warehouse 0171 627 1410.. The Temple of Pan, a Grade II* listed folly is one of several built on the Halswell Estate near Taunton in Somerset, and the only one which will be in private ownership.

Stone surrounds are expensive in natural Portland or Bath stone, but reconstructed stone reduces the price by about half. At the Antique Fireplace Warehouse, a classic Victorian marble surround will cost from pounds 395, plus VAT, delivery and installation, but go up to pounds 6,000 for something very grand, called The Windsor. There’s nothing like one.”A good quality pine mantel, with gas coal fire and hearth will cost around pounds 750, but they go up to pounds 1,500 for something like a rare serpentine mantel fireplace made in 1851 for the Great Exhibition in London. You can have a complete chimney system installed, but you wouldn’t get any change from pounds 1,000, before you start looking at fireplaces.Real fires, says Liz Martin of Amazing Grates in London, are making a comeback.”Before, 95 per cent of people who bought a fireplace had a gas coal- effect fire Now I would say 25 per cent intend to have a real fire. Glass-fronted, enclosed solid fuel fires can have a cast iron flue running up the wall and vented through the roof Convected warm-air units will give more heat for your money. Some gas fires use a fan to draw the gas through the wall vent to outside air.

“Who wants to sit on a sofa staring at a blank wall?”Fireplaces virtually disappeared during the Eighties when developers running on a tight profit margin regarded a fireplace an an optional extra. Fortunately, if you now regret having no focal point in the sitting room, other than the TV, having no chimney doesn’t rule out having a fire. And now, in National Fireplace Month (you hadn’t noticed?) the trade association hopes everyone else will feel the same. “A fireplace certainly makes it easier to sell a house, be it medieval or modern,” says Martin Phillips, of Phillips & Stubbs estate agents in Kent. It was a challenge for the installer, as access is down steep steps, the nearest parking was a quarter of a mile away and heavy goods have to be delivered by boat.
The Skellerns consider their gas-fired Jetmaster well worth the effort. When singer-songwriter Peter “She’s A Lady” Skellern and his wife Diana moved into their watersdie home in Fowey, Cornwall, putting in a fire was one of the first changes they made.