Timely mail from Philip (head engineer at Blake & Bull) in my inbox this morning, pictures from yesterdays conversions. Timely because, having seen this post from Oliver Jeffers (love his books) on Instagram the night before, I had not stopped thinking about how wonderfully long Aga range cookers can last! Totally fit for purpose this 4 oven is now trying out its third fuel type, and is set to serve its owners for many more years!
The post was about an olive tree, 3500 years old, it still produces fruit every autumn. It is gnarly, twisted, propped up and shows the wear of time. But it is well tended, looked after, breathtakingly beautiful and eminently useful! No need to be written off because of its age.
This beauty now has a redundant boiler on the left, but still fully functional ovens, hotplates and warming cupboards. Some time ago she was converted to oil. We rarely see this door set up, it was done to conceal the new oil feed and looks a little clumsy in black against the buttery cream.
We were happily able to restore a smaller one, and once the compact control panel was fitted the new door could be mounted. Making her look as she should.
Brilliantly simple and more efficient the Electrikit set up in this cooker supplies heat directly to individual parts of the cooker. All surplus cast parts are carefully removed and responsibly recycled, meaning that no fuel is wasted in heating non functional cast.
Essentially though, despite her various iterations, she is still the same marvellous machine, set to cook for further decades.
