04 November 2008 10:36

Memories of a life with Aga

Hot from the postbag is this charming letter from Philip Dudden.

My father Richard - ever the master of delegation - has asked me to write to you having seen an article in The Daily Telegraph asking for information about 50-plus year-old Agas still in use.

Father's late aunt, Eadie, installed an Aga in 1939; apparently it cost £68. That Aga is still in its original, anthracite-consuming condition; still in full-time use, but now looked after by Eadie's 'baby' brother, Ken, who's now 93 or 94 years old.

The farmhouse is, I gather, something of a timepiece and I wouldn't be surprised if the Aga's installation was about the only 'improvement' made in the 20th century. The interior, incidentally, was used earlier this year for an episode of the TV programme Casualty.

Marketing and promotions are nothing new to Aga! Aunt Eadie earned herself a free set of cookware by introducing a new customer - her sister, my grandmother, Winnie. Grandmother's Aga was installed in 1940 at Manor Farm. Grandfather was disgusted that the price had then risen to £70!

This Aga replaced a Stanley range and when my grandmother arrived at Manor Farm, as a new bride in 1921, she found beaten earth on the floor of the kitchen covered in locally grown rush. The rushes were thrown out once a year each spring. And if you'd known my grandmother, you wouldn't be surprised to learn that the rushes didn't last long - the floor was promptly flagged.

The grandparents retired in about 1949, moving three cottages (then knocked into one) that my grandfather had inherited through his great great-grandfather. Needless to say, they installed a new Aga.

But grandmother's Manor Farm Aga hadn't seen the last of us. It was uprooted in 1951 and installed at the new marital home and farm of my parents, Richard and Elizabeth. It later moved within the farmhouse and was converted to diesel-oil.

The promotional pans didn't end with Eadie. My grandmother earned herself a set when another sister, Louise, bought an Aga - presumably in 1940/41.

So Agas were the centre of my life (the only warm spot in the house) from its outset in 1952. And they weren't just used for normal things - [we would also] stuff the lower oven floor with hay and plonk the odd sickly lamb there to revive (door left open, of course!)

My mother read novels late into the night, leant over the right-hand cover. Mother's read novels were easily identifiable - they'd become 'loose leaf' with the melting of their glued spines.

Agas followed me about, too. We bought a very smart, dark royal blue one for £2,500 in 1978 (grandfather would have been apoplectic). Then, having moved from Somerset to Cornwall, we 'inherited' a swanky red number at Tresaddern Farm, St Columb. Not able to leave well alone, we moved it to an adjacent, former store room to form a new kitchen.

You might think that I should now, in my fourth floor flat, be well removed from Agas and weak-necked lambs in bottom ovens, but you can't keep a good Aga down: I'm now toying with installing a Little Wenlock Aga stove.