There is a fair chance your ceiling chandelier is a far cry from the earliest chandeliers – which were simply wooden crosses with four arms, with spikes nailed into the ends of each arm, so that candles could be driven onto them. These could be hoisted up to a suitable height with a rope. As you could imagine, these would drip wax all over your floor, blacken your roof with smoke, and probably not need very much cleaning – they’d need a lot more than cleaning to make them look presentable! As chandeliers grew more ornate, some kept the rope-hoisting apparatus – which has saved the heroes...

In the race to beautify your door, which will win – door knobs or lever handles? Antique door knobs are more easily found than antique lever handles – the lever handle being a relatively newer design. However, if you can find an older lever handle that you like, this sort of door hardware offers much better functionality, especially for children and older persons.

Click below to read our NEW Ultimate Brass Cleaning Guide where we describe over 15 natural & DIY methods! Cleaning your door knobs and the rest of your doors is a great way to give your whole house a lift. These are cleaned so rarely that when you do see them clean, it makes you feel as if you’re living in a hospital – or the home of someone with way more time than you! If you have an old home, you more than likely have brass door knobs – it was a common material used for creating door accessories at the time.

Bolts and brackets, fingerplates and fanlight openers, hooks and hinges, knobs and knockers, and locks and latches are all part of the heritage of hardware in our old houses. Hardware is one of the great glories of old houses, although until quite recently it was often overlooked. People restored the structure of their houses but forgot about the details. Today, it is realised that the appeal of old houses owes much to the attention to detail which their original architects, builders and owners lavished upon them. In an age when time allows for very little detailed work to be carried out in new...