Do you remember the old black lead ranges?

[phantom309]

We had one in our first house at walkley and my wife used it a lot more than the gas cooker until we had to modernise it to comply with the smokeless fuel in the early 70s. The gas cooker was usually used for the grill and gas rings as all baking and yorkshires ,stews and roasts were done in the range oven.

[Balpin]

I think you are looking to deep Its most probably this type of range

http://www.jw-eng.co.uk/page_1227786541328.html

 

You are right and wrong at the same time or maybe I am.

That looks like a yorkshire range, but the word 'cornish' was used to describe any fireplace top, or mantlepiece.

The only answer is to ask our long departed relatives. Mind you, I dont think they would have known either, these things are lost in time.

The things were a blessed nuisance.

The work involved in running one of them efficiently was the reason everyone changed to gas and electricity.

 

Imagine comparing to runniing your car.

Leave it ticking over all night

In the morning refuel

Check and refresh all temps and airflows, continually

Decoke the engine after every 10 miles

 

They were not the best devices.

[Janner]

I think you are looking to deep Its most probably this type of range

http://www.jw-eng.co.uk/page_1227786541328.html

 

The ranges we had, the fire was open at the top & a slatted shelf could be lowered over the fire. One Xmas during the war we had rabbit for dinner. Dad rigged up a hand drill, the type which had a handle to rotate the the drill bit through gearing. The rabbit was turned to get it cooked all through. When I told my grand daughter that we had rabbit for Xmas dinner she was horrified.

[echo beach]

My Grandma had one in the '40s & '50s when I was a nipper. In fact it was still used right up to her death in '71. That was in a house just off Sharrow Lane.

Even up to the early 1950s houses on the newly built council estates were fitted with similar ovens but the layout was back to back with the open fire in the living room feeding the enamel coated cast iron oven in the kitchen.

There's still a traditional Yorkshire range in the cottage next door to me but it's there simply for aesthetic & nostalgic purposes. As Balpin pointed out they were inconvenient and very hard work to maintain plus burning coal became environmentally unacceptable. Open fires have gone the same way for similar reasons. We now live in a society of convenience.

[grinder]

I think you are looking to deep Its most probably this type of range

http://www.jw-eng.co.uk/page_1227786541328.html

 

The old Yorkshire ranges I remember looked more like the first of these,

 

http://www.yorkshirenet.co.uk/yorkshirerangecompany/

[trastrick]

The old Yorkshire ranges I remember looked more like the first of these,

 

http://www.yorkshirenet.co.uk/yorkshirerangecompany/

 

You must be very old, as they were around in Victorian times.

 

The ones I'm familiar with were a modern version installed in council houses built in the 1930s

[cleegirl]

We had the old range in the house at Hatfield House Lane, Shirehall Road & Masters Rd. on Parson Cross.They had an oven, a grill the was hinged over the fire to put pots on, the big disadvantage was the hot water boiler behind the fire place, no fire, no hot water. My father worked at Wm. Greens 's in Ecclesfield as a Stove, Grate Fitter.

hi we an range like that on bright street where i grew up my gran cooked everythink in the oven or on the fire or a two ring gas ring and i still like to make my own rice puddings and im agran myself now but i never can get it to taste like my grans rice pudding there was somethink about the range oven i reckon j

[flightliner]

all the houses on yew lane had yorkshire ranges when i lived there

my dad bought a gas fire for the room and had a wooden screen built in the kitchen to hide the range when the council came to remove them they thought ours had been taken wonder if its slill there

 

Hey Rabbiter, nice to see you are ok.:

We had a black yorkshire range in our council house back in the fifties, they were ok but combined with a solid floor they were a breeding ground for silverfish:gag:.

No more the fifteen yards from where i,m sat right now there is one in an old potting shed that is still in good working order:roll:.

[grinder]

You must be very old, as they were around in Victorian times.

 

The ones I'm familiar with were a modern version installed in council houses built in the 1930s

 

No, well yes, but not that old.

What I ment was that was more like the lay out as I remember them..

My grandmother had one in a coucil house on the Parsons cross estate and that must have been built in the 1930s.

The oven was on the right hand side and there was a flat top with a lid over a small tank to the left of the fire grate you could hot up water in..

I remember we used a wire toasting fork to toast the big wedgers of bread we'd cut, in front of the fire..... magic !

As for the victorian bit, I don't doubt some of the ones I helped to pull out in 1955/56 where that old...

[JACK HEWITT]

Ho what memories of the OLD YORKSHIRE RANGE it was my job as a nipper to fetch the coal up from the cellar chop the logs into sticks and have every thing ready to light the fire first thing in the morning not forgetting to roll newspaper up into long tubes and then tie into knots could not afford firelighters at our house once the flame had got hold it was a large double sheet of newspaper put across the front to draw the flames we also had a separate metal bin outside for the ashes but the BEST memory of all was finding a fall of soot when you came down stairs in the morning ho what joy in having to clean up after it had spread to every corner of the room but like every other post until you had tasted MUMS cooking on the old range you had not lived meat & potato pie with Hendersons, rice pudding with a thick skin on top,roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding made in a LARGE tin which was always eaten as a starter must stop now getting hungry HAPPY DAYS.