Property: Fired up with a passion for flame (repro if necessary)

home front; A roaring fire is a superb asset but in some houses, it's just not feasible to have naked flames licking away. In National Fireplace Month, Rosalind Russell looks at some other ways of getting some natural warmth into your home

There's nothing like an old flame to take the chill out of an autumn evening. 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.

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. 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. "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. Some gas fires use a fan to draw the gas through the wall vent to outside air. 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. 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. 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. 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. Stone surrounds are expensive in natural Portland or Bath stone, but reconstructed stone reduces the price by about half. 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.