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Chris Salter quoted Lynn Willies as writing that the Scotch Hearth was a version of the ore hearth in which the stones of the hearth were replaced by cast iron blocks, but Lynn was wrong. The various components of the ore hearth were called stones and in early versions were made of stone, but all the smelting accounts that I've seen (mainly Yorkshire and north Pennines) refer to 'hearths' or 'ore hearths'. In those cases, the various stones comprising the hearth were made of iron by the late 17th century. The term Scotch Hearth was used by Percy, but it is either one of those frustrating non-terms which come to haunt us, or its true meaning (if any) is lost to us. It is hard to see what advances were made to the ore-hearth in Scotland, where a good example has been reconstructed at Wanlockhead, but there can only ever have been a dozen or so at work in that country at any one time - whereas in 1850 the Pennine areas of Yorkshire, Durham, Westmorland, Cumberland and Northumberland had getting on for 80. Lynn's paper is useful and has a good diagram by me showing how the hearth was assembled and naming the various parts (for the poetic - there is no lower swing swivel). Regards, Mike Gill