‘As Snug as a Bug in a Rug’: post war housing, homes and coal fires

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Nead, Lynda (2017) ‘As Snug as a Bug in a Rug’: post-war housing, homes

and coal fires. Science Museum Group Journal 2018 (9), ISSN 2054-5770.

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Science Museum Group Journal

‘As snug as a bug in a rug’: post-war housing, homes and coal

fires

Journa l ISSN numbe r: 2054-5770 Thi s a rti cl e wa s wri tte n by Lynda Ne a d

12-06-2017 Ci te a s 10.15180; 180902 Re s e a rch

‘As s nug a s a bug i n a rug’: pos t-wa r hous i ng, home s a nd coa l fi re s

Publ i s he d i n Spri ng 2018, Is s ue 09

Arti cl e DOI: http://dx.doi .org/10.15180/180902

Abstract

This article examines the layers of meaning and value attached to the image of the open coal fires ide in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War. Although the open fire has a much longer economic, s ocial and cultural his tory, it is argued here that after 1945 it took on new, emergent meanings that tapped into pres s ing contemporary debates concerning the nature of the modern Britis h nation, the home and the family. Whils t writers often evoked the experience of the open fire as a timeles s comfort, addres s ing bas ic human needs , the fires ide of pos t-war Britis h journalis m and illus tration was a very modern thing indeed, able to expres s s pecific debates aris ing from the requirements of recons truction and modernis ation. The almos t folkloric as s ociations of the open fire made it harder in the 1950s to legis late agains t domes tic s moke than it was to regulate indus trial pollution. Ves ted interes ts drew on the powerful rhetoric of the coal fire to combat the s moke pollution reports of the early 1950s and the growing inevitability of legis lation. The coal fire was part of a pos t-war chain of being that s tarted with the domes tic hearth and progres s ed to the nuclear family, the s elf-contained home, the nation, and ultimately to the Commonwealth.

Compone nt DOI: http://dx.doi .org/10.15180/180902/001

Keywords

pos t-war Britain, coal fire, family, nation, commonwealth, advertis ing, journalis m, homes , heating

Images of homes and heating pervade Britis h culture after the end of the Second World War. They are pres ent in novels , films , advertis ing, journalis m and painting; in both the background and the foreground of repres entation. Thes e images always amount to s omething more than the s um of their parts ; they are never jus t about the forms of domes tic s pace but s peak of ideas that are deeper and more defining. The appearance of the open fire contained within the protective frame of the fireplace s eems to s peak to timeles s values of comfort and repos e, or to addres s an undefinable human need. In his Psychoanalysis of Fire (firs t publis hed in 1938), the French philos opher Gas ton Bachelard des cribed the experience of reverie before an open fire as an es s ential human comfort that lies beyond his torical determination (Bachelard, 1964). While s uch a claim appears to conform to common s ens e and s hared experience, it als o demons trates the power of this particular mythology. Roland Barthes ’s work on mythology offers a us eful framework for an unders tanding of the ways in which repres entations of the fires ide have been circulated and cons umed. For Barthes , the mos t important effect of myth is the trans formation of his tory into nature; the way in which it s uppres s es his torical conditions of exis tence in its production of meaning as timeles s and inevitable. In this way, he des cribes myth as ‘the foundation of a collective morality’ (Barthes , 1972, p 59). To be s ure, the fires ide has a long and deep his tory, but its longevity is part of its mythic form. Whils t it bears the s ymbolis m of ancient humanity it is als o able to addres s very modern concerns indeed.

This article examines the s pecific contemporary meanings of the pos t-war Britis h fires ide and of the coal fire in particular. Drawing on res idual ideologies , it als o expres s ed new, powerful meanings that s pecifically addres s ed the concerns of the pos t-war nation. Whils t thes e is s ues were defined in official dis cours es and fought over by commercial interes ts , it was in cultural life, and s pecifically through the vis ual forms of advertis ing and illus tration that the myth of the pos t-war open fires ide was mos t effectively popularis ed and dis s eminated. In the decade or s o following the end of the war, domes tic heating and, in particular, the look and feel of the open coal fire, was an active agent in debates concerning the recons truction of the nation, the nature of Britis h modernity and the future of the family.

Hous ing was the firs t great problem for pos t-war Britain.[1] Its s ignificance went far beyond the provis ion of dwellings , however. War had s hattered families , phys ically, emotionally and ps ychologically and the home was neces s arily the foundation of pos t-war s ocial recons truction and the res toration of family life; home would repair the damage of war. As the locus of economic and political power, the foundation of s ocial recons truction and the bedrock of emotional and ps ychic well-being, the home permeated all as pects of public and private life in the pos t-war period. It defined the as pirations of peacetime Britain and was the dis tinctive dis cours e of the period. Although hous ing was about material realities , it als o exis ted through more abs tract and intangible forms , in cultural expres s ion and individual longing; it created the tones of pos t-war Britain. Whils t political parties s truggled over the numbers of homes built, the home was not about s tatis tics , it was about the qualitative life of the period and its deep expres s ion, what Raymond Williams has called its ‘s tructure of feeling’ (Williams , 1958, 1961, 1977).

In the years immediately following the war s ocial workers and ps ychiatris ts were agreed that Britis h s ociety was in a

trans itional s tage and that the hous ing s hortage was having a des tructive effect on the lives of a generation. In a s urvey of two hundred s oldiers and their wives , carried out between 1943 and 1946, Eliot Slater and Moya Woods ide examined attitudes to marriage and concluded that the des ire for a home was the mos t common reas on for marriage and was of key importance to individual happines s . They found a huge dis parity, however, between the fantas ies of home and the material realities of pos t-war accommodation. Many couples were living with relations , or were renting rooms and flats in hous es :

We found attics , top floors and bas ements ; rooms over s hops , pubs and off-licens es ; bomb-damaged hous es s till unrepaired or partly repaired; unpainted cracking walls and ceilings ; damp, draughts , and black-out arrangements permanently in pos ition. The families who live in thes e homes had inadequate s torage…inadequate was hing facilities … Many had no furniture of their own… Others had to make do with bare half-furnis hed rooms , decked out with the few pathetic bits and pieces they had been able to collect.

‘…tragedy of our era’ (Slater and Woods ide, 1951, pp 217, 125).

Plans for hous ing that s tarted out as radical vis ions of a new, modern s ociety were frequently compromis ed by s queezed res ources and political realities ; the need for accommodation was s o s evere that large s cale ambitions had to take a back s eat to the bas ic provis ion of s helter for families . There remained a s trong s ens e, however, that hous ing was not enough to res tore s ociety and did not neces s arily create the homes and families that had been torn apart by the war and that were at the heart of s ocial recons truction. Whereas hous ing s ugges ted a kind of anonymous mas s , home was particular and individualis ed; it was the object of emotional and ps ychic inves tment and was as s ociated with memory and with the pas t as much as with the modern and the new (Roberts , 1989, p 3).

The object that s eemed to embody the emotional affects of home and its res torative capacities was the open coal fire. In s pite of its inconveniences , for many the mythology of the flames of the coal fire was a lived experience, repres enting all the

accumulated meanings of home and family. Whils t bearing an almos t primordial s ymbolis m, they were a s ource of comfort that s till claimed a place in modern, pos t-war s ociety. Although thes e as s ociations were pres ent in earlier periods , they had been intens ified during the war years , when the domes tic hearth s ymbolis ed not only the individual family home but the home fires of the nation. In 1943 and in anticipation of a hous ing s hortage when the war ended, Mas s Obs ervation publis hed a s urvey of people’s attitudes to home for the Advertis ing Service Guild (Enquiry, 1943).[2] Chapter s ixteen was devoted to the s ubject of ‘Warmth’. Drawing on a random s ample taken in May 1942, the s urvey s tated that 78 per cent of people us ed coal for their living rooms , compared to only 15 per cent who us ed gas and three per cent who us ed oil. Moreover, as ked ‘what type of heating they would like if they could choos e’, 73 per cent s aid they would prefer an open coal fire. The reas ons for this choice went beyond the provis ion of warmth, relating to what the report referred to as ‘Coal Feelings ’. The coal fire was ‘cheerful’, ‘homely’, ‘comforting’ and looked nice; it had emotional and aes thetic qualities , ‘intangible virtues ’ that were lacking in gas and electric fires (Enquiry, 1943, pp 136–7).

One of the great advocates of the national coal fire was George Orwell. In his 1941 es s ay, ‘England Your England’, he evoked the embattled nation in terms of its es s ential and everyday values , ‘…the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fires ide and the “nice cup of tea”’ (http://orwell.ru/library/es s ays /lion/englis h/e_eye). Thes e were images and ideas that s ymbolis ed an authentic working-clas s culture but which als o s upers eded clas s and cohered a nation. Shortly after the end of the war Orwell went further. Saturday 8 December 1945 was a bitter winter’s day. The forecas t, publis hed on the front page of the Evening Standard, was ‘very cold: keen fros t: local s now’. In a column on the ins ide pages that day Orwell addres s ed the ques tion of homes and heating in pos t-war Britain. As the nation moved from hurriedly cons tructed prefab hous es to the provis ion of permanent homes , Orwell argued that every hous e or flat s hould have at leas t one open fire:

For a room that is to be lived in, only a coal fire will do… This evening, while I write, the s ame pattern is being reproduced in hundreds of thous ands of Britis h homes . To one s ide of the fireplace s its Dad, reading the evening paper. To the other s ide s its Mum, doing her knitting. On the hearthrug s it the children, playing s nakes and ladders . Up agains t the fender, roas ting hims elf, lies the dog. It is a comely pattern, a good background to one’s memories , and the s urvival of the family as an ins titution may be more dependent on it than we realis e (Orwell, 1945, p 6).

Hyperbole, perhaps , but Orwell draws on a powerful ideology connecting the traditional family home and the coal fire. Like mother and father, the fireplace s hould have a capital letter, for its place in cons tructing family life is equally pivotal. And Orwell s ugges ted one further s ignificance of the coal fire, it warmed the imagination as well as the body:

Then there is the fas cination, inexhaus tible to a child, of the fire its elf. A fire is never the s ame for two minutes together, you can look into the red heart of the coals and s ee caverns or faces or s alamanders , according to your imagination… A gas or electric fire, or even an anthracite s tove, is a dreary thing by comparis on.

The open coal fire thus had ‘an aes thetic appeal’ and even the res tricted heat it produced had a pos itive impact on family life, enforcing ‘s ociability’ as parents and children huddled within the parabola of its warmth. It was an enduring myth. In 1957, in

22).

In s pite of the accumulated s ymbolis m of the coal fire there was growing acknowledgement in the pos t-war period that burning coal from domes tic fireplaces was polluting the urban environment. Coal was difficult to s tore in bulk, it was awkward and dirty and with pos t-war s hortages it was not neces s arily a cheap option. Increas ingly, the open fire was being us ed in

combination with other forms of heating s uch as gas or electric fires . The coal fire might pos s es s res idual s entimental values , but it was not the fuel for a modern, clean, s tream-lined pos t-war Britain.

By the late-1940s a number of new council developments had been completed, which offered more s pace, better facilities and different forms of heating. In 1947 the Scottis h writer Compton Mackenzie publis hed The Vital Flame, a paean to gas ,

Figure 1

‘Fires ide Glow. Cos y but s mokeles s comfort – a gas -ignited coke fire.’ In Compton Mackenzie, The Vital Flame (London: Frederick Muller, 1947. Publis hed for the Britis h Gas Council), plate 28

Figure 2

‘The Story Ends . Coal has yielded up its riches .’ In Compton Mackenzie, The Vital Flame (London: Frederick Muller, 1947. Publis hed for the Britis h Gas Council), plate 32

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15180/180902/003

ugly tenements of Victorian days . They will be s urrounded by playgrounds and railed-in gardens ’ (Townroe, 1949, p 33). It lis ts the facilities offered ins ide the accommodation including: a boiler in the kitchen; a s un balcony; and living-rooms with open fires (Townroe, 1949, p 8). This was the s hape of the future, with flats and communities that would not only addres s the chronic hous ing problems of the nineteenth century, but would als o create functional, modern living and, mos t importantly, homes that would res tore and renew.

Figure 3

B S Townroe, ‘Hous ing: London Shows How.’ Photographed by Chris Ware. Picture Post, 22 January 1949, p 7

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15180/180902/004

Figure 4

Advertis ement for ‘Ideal Neofire’, in National Smoke Abatement Society, Year Book, 1951, p 44

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15180/180902/005

reformers the arguments s eemed clear cut; others , however, remained unconvinced. In January 1952 Picture Post quoted Mrs Charlton, the wife of an es tate agent, who ins is ted: ‘I like to see the fire. Even if it does cos t us more to keep our old fire going, we’ll s till s tick to it. It’s more cheerful, more homely. This [clos ed s tove] looks s o cold’ [original emphas is ] (Stobbs , January 1952, p 14).

Following the Great Fog of December 1952, during which London was plunged into five days of thick s mog and mortality rates s oared, the arguments agains t domes tic coal us e became increas ingly unas s ailable. There was a new urgency and public awarenes s to ongoing debates concerning air pollution and, following pres s ure from MPs , a Committee of Inquiry was s et up under Sir Hugh Beaver, which publis hed its final report in 1954 (s ee Nead, 2017, chapter one). Clean heating was a priority for modern homes and des igners reworked the image of the open domes tic fire s o that it was compatible with the new furniture lines , the abs tract forms and res trained patterns of pos t-war progres s ive living. ‘Let’s Keep the Home Fires Burning Without Was ting Heat and Fuel’, demanded a Picture Post journalis t in 1955. ‘Keep the home fires burning’; it was a phras e that evoked the s pirit of the nation in wartime but this was a different pos t-war world. The new fires and s toves ‘…cut fuel bills , make rooms and hous es warmer, and – horrors ! – they look entirely different’ [original emphas is ] (Stobbs , 1955, pp 36, 37).

Figure 5

Advertis ement for the Gas Council, in Picture Post, 19 November 1956, p 57

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15180/180902/006

the pos t-war years . In an article entitled ‘No Place Like Home’, publis hed in 1957 in the s elf-confes s ed retrogres s ive and s entimental annual mis cellany, The Saturday Book, Olive Cook celebrated ‘…the privacy, the well-curtained windows and the cos y fire of our own home’ (Cook and Smith, 1957, p 15). In fact, this is a very 1950s take on the open fire. It is homely, private and s elf-contained; owner-occupied rather than a rented room with s hared facilities .

Whils t marriages and families were s training to adapt to pos t-war domes tic life, the coal fire remained a s ymbol of continuity and well-being and in her s econd Chris tmas broadcas t as Queen, it is hardly s urpris ing that Elizabeth II drew on its reas s uring and familiar image to repres ent the tribulations of the Commonwealth:

When it is night and wind and rain beat upon the window, the family is mos t cons cious of the warmth and peacefulnes s that s urround the pleas ant fires ide, s o our Commonwealth hearth becomes more precious than ever before by the contras t between its homely s ecurity and the s torm which s ometimes s eems to be brewing outs ide… (Fleming, 1981, p 75)

Thes e almos t folkloric as s ociations made it harder in the 1950s to legis late agains t domes tic s moke than it was to regulate the s moke from indus trial chimneys . Ves ted interes ts drew on the powerful rhetoric of the coal fire to combat the s moke pollution reports of the early-1950s and the growing inevitability of legis lation. In its res pons e to the 1954 Beaver Report on Air

Pollution, a member of the Ins titute of [Coal] Fuel s tated: ‘I refus e to be deprived of s ome of the things that are dear to my heart, and one of them is the open fire’; watching the flames of a coal fire, he continued, is a trigger for the romantic imagination, like ‘…watching waves break on the s ea-s hore – and who wanted to s it and look at the electric radiator or the gas fire?’ (Journal of the Institute of Fuel, 1955, as cited in Thors heim, 2006, p 180).[6] The National Union of Mineworkers was als o a powerful lobby group in this period and it is pos s ible that the Cons ervative Government’s s upport of anti-s moke legis lation was motivated, in part, by the des ire to curtail the power of the miners . With royalty, indus try, unions and popular culture mobilis ing the myth of the coal fire, it was up to Arnold Mars h, General Secretary of the National Smoke Abatement Society, to criticis e the ‘…vis cous s entimentality that s urrounds the open coal fire’ and to s pell out the environmental problems created by this ‘…grand old Englis h cus tom’ (Mars h, 1947, p 216). The coal fire could only as s ume its s ymbolic image as a national cus tom and a

repos itory of feeling through the people s eated around it and in the 1950s thos e people were the happy companionable couple and their family. The coal fire was part of a pos t-war chain of being that s tarted with the domes tic hearth and progres s ed to the family, the home, the nation and the Commonwealth.

Figure 6

Advertis ement for Ovaltine, in Picture Post, 12 December 1953, p 30

Figure 7

Advertis ement for Ovaltine, in Everywoman, January 1958, p 3

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15180/180902/008

thes e years . In its 1943 report on people’s homes , Mas s Obs ervation made the pres cient comment ‘…at pres ent the fireplace often occupies a central pos ition in the room…and if hous es are to be des igned without fireplaces , s ome new focus may have to be found’ (Enquiry, 1943, p 137). By the middle of the 1950s , televis ion had cons olidated its place at the heart of domes tic entertainment: more people owned televis ions ; there were new ways of purchas ing or renting s ets ; national network coverage had grown; and there were longer hours of broadcas ting. Steadily and inexorably, the televis ion s et us urped the open coal fire at the heart of family life. It could not provide warmth but it could feed the fantas y of the cos y hearth; it comes as no s urpris e that the virtual fireplace, with crackling flames and glowing logs and coals , is a favourite video today for s mart televis ions and computer s creens avers . No dirt, no s moke, s ame dream.

Compone nt DOI: http://dx.doi .org/10.15180/180902/009

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Footnotes

1. The phras e was us ed in ‘“Blitz” and “Blight”’, Picture Post, 14 July 1945, p 26. There is an extens ive literature on hous ing and planning in the pos t-war period; amongs t the mos t helpful and detailed are: Has egawa, 1992; Tirats oo, 2000; Bullock, 2002; Larkham and Nas r, eds , 2004; Flinn, 2012; Claps on and Larkham, eds , 2013.

2. For an excellent account of Britis h debates about domes tic heating and pollution in the firs t half of the twentieth century s ee Mos ley, 2007. For a us eful his tory of the electric fire s ee Wyatt, 2007, and on oil heating in pos t-war Britain s ee Cartwright.

3. Boiler and radiator manufacturers advertis ed new des igns in both s pecialis t and general pres s ; s ee for example National Smoke Abatement Society, 1952, p 38; 1959, p 7; Architectural Review, 1955, p lx.

4. Mr Therm was named after the unit of energy that appeared on gas bills . See Stephen Mos ley, 2016, p 204. Als o ‘Mr Therm Goes into the Cinema Bus ines s ’, 1954, p 1010.

5. On domes tic coal fires and s moke in the nineteenth century s ee Brimblecombe, 1988; Mos ley, 2003; and Thors heim, 2006. On the home as a metaphor for the nation in wartime s ee Lant, 1996.

6. The argument that the gas fire could never s timulate the vis ual imagination was als o put in ‘Focal Point’, The Times, 1946. The s ugges tion that the Cons ervative government agreed to a committee to inquire into air pollution as a way of curbing the power of the National Union of Mineworkers is made, for example, by Roy Parker, 2005, p 18. See

http://www.icbh.ac.uk/witnes s /hygiene/s moke.

7. Ovaltine is a milk-bas ed drink, containing barley, malt and cocoa. In 1953 the brand had been boos ted when Sir Edmund Hillary had drunk Ovaltine during his Everes t climb.

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4. Brimblecombe, P, 1988, The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution since Medieval Times (London and New York: Routledge) 5. Bullock, N, 2002, Building the Post-War World: Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Britain (London and New York:

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6. Cartwright, A, http://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/06/grenfell-fire-gentrification-real-es tate-neglect (acces s ed 6 July 2017)

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(Farnham: As hgate)

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Author information

Lynda Nead is Pevs ner Profes s or of His tory of Art at Birkbeck, Univers ity of London. She has publis hed on many as pects of Britis h vis ual culture and her mos t recent book is The Tiger in the Smoke: Art and Culture in Post-War Britain (Yale Univers ity Pres s , 2017)

Lynda Nead