Just musing here, logging all the kindle, coal, etc up the stairs.......... and carrying the ash remains down ............... Eh no thanks .
That was my thought as well, in the days when all middle class Irish houses had fires in their bedrooms, we also had maids to do the look after them. I would go for gas with a balanced flue, you can get 86% efficiency with one of these [broken link removed] . I was looking at them recently, the styles have all have different names and more are available than in the link, but the Gazco Logic E-Box is the most efficient fire/internals I could find. It is a convector with a glass screen in front, they run at about 1100 euro.
Another advantage is the 'Thermostatic Remote Control', easy to control from the bed
with no getting up to upen a window when the room gets too hot and when waking up freezing in the middle of the night after the fire goes out!
Towger