Antique Stoves between £0 and £0
Freestanding appliances that held fire: cast iron burning stoves, small portable foot warmers in oak or brass, and the fixed cast iron cooking range of a Victorian kitchen.
What Are Antique Stoves?
The heading covers a small, mixed group. On Sellingantiques the population splits almost evenly between iron burning stoves, roughly six of sixteen listings, and foot stoves in carved wood or embossed brass, five of them. Three Victorian kitchen cooking ranges sit at the top of the range. Sizes and forms differ too much to describe one type.
The form you'll meet most often is a cast iron stove or wood burner, listed plainly as a cast iron stove, a log burner or a woodburner. Three of the six are given as Victorian or 19th century, and two carry years, 1890 and 1920. Some have an enamelled finish, and two name French Continental foundries.
Enclosed iron stoves spread across northern Europe from the seventeenth century as a more efficient answer to the open hearth, and foundries poured them in quantity through the nineteenth. Foot stoves, a box holding a pan of embers, warmed feet in the Low Countries long before that. The cast iron range became standard in larger nineteenth-century houses.
Periods are recorded unevenly. Nine listings carry a period and only four a clean year, and those four run 1890 to 1920, so the dated field mostly describes the iron stoves. Victorian is the commonest label. Foot stoves are largely undated in the field even when the title cites a date cut into the piece, 1724 or 1901.
Where Value Sits
Form does most of the work. The three Early Victorian cooking ranges hold the three highest asking figures in the sample, and plain cast iron stoves sit at the bottom of it. Between the two, decoration lifts things: ornate, enamelled, Art Nouveau and partly painted all appear on the dearer stoves, while the cheapest is described only as cast with an enamel finish.
A named foundry or retailer counts. The listings citing De Dietrich & Nied, Bontesse and Briffault of London all sit well above the unattributed iron stoves, which arrive with nothing more than a period label and a shape.
Among the wooden foot stoves, carving separates them. Chip-carved and Turkish-knot examples run above the plainer end, and even three near-identical chip-carved Frisian stoves spread across a wide band. Material and an early cut-in date carry further still: the hand-embossed brass foot stove dated 1724 is the only pre-nineteenth-century piece in the sample, and the only foot stove near the top.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for stoves between £0 and £0, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Nine dealers have listed an antique stove on Sellingantiques.
The Antique Stoves between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Foot stove
- A small portable box, wooden or metal, holding a pan of embers to warm the feet. Five of the sixteen listings are this form.
- Cooking range
- A fixed cast iron kitchen appliance combining firebox, ovens and hotplates. Three listings, all described as Early Victorian.
- Log burner
- An enclosed stove for burning wood rather than coal, also listed as a woodburner. Cast iron in every case here.
- Cast iron
- Iron poured into moulds, which gives the crisp raised ornament found on the stoves and ranges. Enamelled means a coloured vitreous coating fired onto it, named on two.
- Chip carving
- Shallow geometric cutting done with a knife or chisel, named on four of the wooden foot stoves. A Turkish knot is an interlaced carved motif, cited on the top of one oak Dutch example.
- Frisian
- From Friesland in the northern Netherlands, used as a cautious attribution for chip-carved oak foot stoves. Hand embossed, by contrast, describes sheet metal raised by hammering from behind.
Frequently Asked Questions
What sort of stoves turn up in this category?
Three groups account for nearly all of it. Cast iron burning stoves and wood burners make up roughly a third, carved wooden foot warmers a quarter to a third, and Early Victorian cooking ranges about a fifth.
A single hand-embossed brass foot stove sits outside those groups. The shared thread across the heading is an appliance, portable or fixed, that contained fire.
How old are antique stoves usually listed as?
Victorian is the commonest label in the sample, with 1920s, 19th century, 1900s and 1890s behind it. Only four listings carry a clean year, and those run 1890 to 1920.
Both 19th century and Victorian are used as broad-brush labels rather than precise dates, and the two are sometimes swapped between a title and the period field.
So the recorded dates describe the iron stoves more than the wooden foot warmers.
Are foot stoves the same as stoves?
They sit under the same heading but they are a different thing. A foot stove is a small portable box, oak or brass, holding a pan of embers, made to warm the feet indoors.
On Sellingantiques they are almost as numerous as the iron burning stoves, with an oval oak Dutch example, three chip-carved oak stoves given as possibly Frisian, one partly painted stove dated 1901 and a brass one dated 1724.
Do any stoves carry a foundry name?
A few do. Two listings name French Continental foundries, and one of those is a French Art Nouveau enamelled cast iron stove. Another names Bontesse, and one names Briffault of London as retailer.
Those named pieces sit well above the cast iron stoves that arrive with no attribution at all.
Which stoves reach the highest asking figures?
The Early Victorian kitchen cooking ranges. All three occupy the top of the range in the sample, above every stove and foot warmer.
The brass foot stove dated 1724 is the exception among the smaller pieces, the only one near that end.
Plain cast iron stoves with no decoration or maker named sit at the bottom.
What makes one carved foot stove worth more than another?
The carving. Chip-carved oak examples and one with a Turkish knot motif on the top run above the plainer end of the group.
Paint counts too, with a partly painted and chip-carved stove dated 1901 among the listings. Even three near-identical chip-carved Frisian stoves spread across a wide band between themselves.