Indispensable Aga

SIR – Our Aga (Letters, September 14) was put into our kitchen in the early 1950s by the then owners. It was second-hand and burnt coal, although they converted it to oil.

Some years ago we replaced the top, the hot-plate lids and the thermometer. It is serviced regularly when the oil feed-pipe clogs up with carbon, and it also has a new barrel above the burner.

This Aga just about saved the lives of my then 94-year-old husband and me – I am 91 – after Storm Arwen hit in November last year, when our village was without power for nine days. I would not get rid of it for anything.

Rosemary Barkes

Kirkheaton, Northumberland

SIR – Agas fall into the same camp as Marmite – one either loves them or hates them.

Those who own them stubbornly defend them, refusing to accept that – as described by a metallurgist – they are simply an inefficient, uncontrollable, wasteful and outrageously expensive lump of cast iron, and useless for cooking anything other than casseroles.

Peter Froggatt

Dorking, Surrey