Join me in the 1900s
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The cooking range in a working class London household in the early 1900s

There seem to have been a wide variety of shapes and sizes of Victorian and Edwardian kitchen ranges - also known as 'kitcheners'. According to my mother's recollections, each house in the Victorian-style terraces where she grew up had two: a small one in the kitchen and a larger one in the scullery. I would love pictures of what they were like, but although the terraced houses of the Edmonton Huxley Estate are still doing good service as homes, they have all been modernised inside. So no such ranges exist there any more to be photographed.

Old kitchen range, also known as a kitchener - common in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

A kitchen range from the early 1900s and before.

Adapted from a sketch provided by Rosemary Hampton from her book.

Click for a larger sketch showing labelled parts of the old range..

Click for a photograph of an actual old range.

However, I have culled the following information by discussing the sketch on the right with Bill Hogg who was familiar with similar ranges as a child. Since the sketch is of a double oven, it is probably reasonably similar to the one in the scullery of the Victorian- style terraces. The one in the kitchen probably just had a single oven.

 

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The fuel

According to my mother's recollections, the fuel in all the houses on her Victorian-style terraced housing estate was coal. However, I understand that elsewhere it could have been wood. The coal was put into the range with the shovel and the top could be opened for the purpose. On some ranges, this top hinged up and on others there was a round lid that could could be lifted. No doubt there were other arrangements.

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The cooking pots

The cooking pots were either cast iron or a cheap sheet metal. There were no lightweight aluminium cooking pots in the early 1900s, and cast iron was very heavy. In wealthier households, cooking pots were copper.

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Adjusting the temperature of the ovens

According to my mother, the temperature of the ovens in her home could be regulated with what were known as dampers which controlled the air flow to the fire.

More generally, though, there were several ways to control the air flow:

Bellows to give a quick blast of air to make a fire flare up

Bellows. Photographed at Nidderdale Museum.

A quick way to get the fire to flare up was to give it a blast of air with bellows.

The temperature could be raised on a longer term by lifting the lid of the fire. Another way was by a sliding control in the flue (chimney) at the back of the range. In some ranges this flue was built in, i.e. hidden behind the back wall.

With the large ranges there was a system of levers to divert and adjust the flow of air to heat either or both ovens.

My mother said that when her mother wanted to build the fire up quickly. She would hold a newspaper in front of the bars to get the fire to draw up, which it did. Then as she could see the newspaper getting hot and going brown, she would grab it, just as it was about to burst into flames and throw it onto the hearth which had a metal dust pan. Needless to say, this was dangerous as it required split-second timing.

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Cleaning the range

Old tin of 'black lead' as used for cleaning cast iron cooking ranges

Tin of 'black lead' used for cleaning and polishing cast iron cookers. Photographed at the Cambridge and County Folk Museum.

The range was a cast-iron fire-oven combination which was kept clean with black lead - a polish for cleaning and shining cast iron. According to Anne Davey born Cole), this came in a tin with the picture of a Zebra on.

My mother's notes make it clear that the outer rims of the range in her home were steel and kept bright with emery paper. I understand that, more generally, the insides of the ovens were kept clean by heating them to a high temperature and burning off the soot. The insides of the ovens may have been removable for cleaning purposes.

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This website Join me in the 1900s is a contribution to the social history of everyday life in early to mid 20th century Britain, seen through personal recollections and illustrations, with the emphasis on what it was like to live in those times. It is © Pat Cryer.

VICTORIAN/ EDWARDIAN WORKING CLASS HOUSING

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