Quote:
Originally Posted by keith higson
Back in the 1940-60s my mum used to cook on a fireside range, nothing wrong with the taste. Her oven had the fire directly open and under the chimney, if she wanted to heat up water she put the pan/kettle onto a platform that swung out from the oven and over the fire.
She also put salt into a pan of water which she said got rid of the soot. Another way was to light a lot of paper which was drawn up the chimney which also cleaned it.
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Back in the late '40s and early '50s we had one in a house on Queen St., Clayton ... never took much note of it ... it was normal for the time. I do remember having baths in the old galvanized tub in front of that fire ... and making toast with the toasting fork ... also used to throw spuds on the fire till the skins were black ... then peeling off the skin and putting some salt and a little marg on them (if we were lucky). I used to think it was a treat ... wasn't till later I found out that this was the last food in the house until my dad's next pay packet.
There seemed to come a time when folks started to junk these monsters and replace them with ugly, modern, tiled things ... sometimes with a back boiler. I remember seeing a whole pile of the old fireplaces down in Basil Brierly's junk yard off Lower Barnes St. He even had a bunch of them on his allotment back of Rishton Rd. where he kept his pigs and stabled his horse.