On the whole, those localities which are removed from important towns are the richest in cottage furniture, for example, Wales, Devonshire, Cumberland, Northumberland, and parts of Yorkshire. In places, where the prosperity of the peasants is of long standing, the cottage furniture has been maintained whole almost until the present day. Altogether the study of local types affords considerable scope for critical study. It is essential that such pieces should be identified and classified before it is too late. Rapidly all cottage and farmhouse furniture is being scattered over all parts of England. Collectors transfer furniture from the North to the South, and the rural treasures of the peasant have been brought to towns and dispersed to alien districts. The Education Act of 1870 and the halfpenny newspaper have brought town fashions to the door of the cottager, and the motor has laid a heavy tribute on rustic seclusion. CHAPTER X MISCELLANEOUS IRONWORK, Etc. CHAPTER X MISCELLANEOUS IRONWORK, ETC. The rushlight-holder--The dipper--The chimney crane--The Scottish crusie--Firedogs--The Warming-pan--Sussex firebacks--Grandfather clocks. The everyday iron utensils and implements of the cottages were simple. It is one of the curious features of the English peasantry that just as they clung to their oak of generations back when mahogany was in vogue, so they adhered tenaciously to ironwork of almost mediæval character when other metals were in fashionable everyday use. Thus the cottager did not feel the oncoming desire for the brass, or later silver and plated candlesticks, but remained firm in his affection for the rushlight-holders in iron, the same types which his ancestors had used, and the firedogs and firebacks of earlier type remained to decorate his hearth. Thus ironwork and rarely brasswork form the sum total of the metal portion of cottage furniture. We will deal with these various utilitarian objects one by one.