In 1300 BC King Arzawa installed central heating in his palace at Beycesultan, Turkey.
The Romans copped on but it was not until the 1970s that central heating was widely installed in British homes. I’m remembering the cold winters described by James Lees-Milne in his diaries. Now I’m reading the third volume of Chips Channon’s diaries.
‘Friday 29th January 1954
It is still Siberian weather and as the pipes have burst at Kelvedon we are spending the weekend in London.
Saturday 30th January 1954
The cold is so intense that one’s energies are numbed and devoted to keeping warm.
Sunday 31st January 1954
Siberian temps. Rabbit (Peter Coats) and I drove to Kelvedon , where the house was like an igloo – or are igloos warm?
Thursday 4th February 1954
Up early and came to the House of Commons, a warm oasis in cold London.
Wednesday 10th February 1954
Servant rumpus continues at B (Belgrave) Square whereas Kelvedon is chaotic; pipes have burst; ceilings are down; rooms have been flooded: it is appalling. I am in despair.”
(Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries 1943 – 57, edited by Simon Heffer)
So the rich man in his castle, so to speak, was colder than the poor man at his gate. Big houses, big rooms, high ceilings, get jolly chilly. The poor man has a few small rooms in the lodge with open fires and is warm as toast. To digress, I offered my advice, pro bono, to the National Trust about buying heating oil for their properties because they were paying over the odds and got no response. I am not a member of the National Trust now.
Why I find the Channon diaries so compelling is the many threads that run through them. He writes about politics, royalties (as he calls them), his very personal life, his constituency in Southend, his money worries, his son, his aspirations and he gossips. To digress again, I think he was in the same situation as PG Wodehouse in being taxed by both the American and British governments on his income. It was why PGW decamped to Deauville.
It’s interesting that Chips became part of the Establishment without having any interest in country pursuits. He did like it when the hounds met at Kelvedon, because it was a pretty scene, but he had no interest in participating or going fishing or shooting. His life was metropolitan. He went to Kelvedon to entertain guests and admire his house and gardens.
Did you know that Mrs Alexander wrote that hymn whilst staying with the Coopers at Markree Castle, Co Sligo? She used several images of the demesne in different verses, inc the gothic lodge on the Dublin road (designed, I think, by the architect of nearby Lissadell Francis Goodwin), where “the poor man” was “at his gate”.
I did not, so thank you. The verse was dropped in England a long time ago but I enjoyed singing it loudly and out of tune in Dunleer (Church of Ireland). “God made them, high or lowly, and ordered their estate.” Mrs Alexander did not embrace levelling up.
Good. It was my aunt Aideen’s favourite hymn! The purple headed etc and the river running by. WB Yeats served us better at Lissadell. As my grandfather noted in his diary “The poetical man Yates – sic – left; shot a roding woodcock in the evening.”
Channon was vain snobbish and self centred. How did a common American rise to the top echelons of English society. How was such an active gay man able to avoid arrest
Well said and you are spot on. However, the legacy of his disreputable life in his diaries are an important contribution to our knowledge about those times. I am only surprised that he had the imagination and diligence to write them knowing they would only be published after his death. He saw himself as a 20th century Pepys and he is.
The best writing in this vein is unencumbered by political affiliations in reality. This illustrated by the plain fact of Alan Clarke’s diaries constituting a masterpiece.