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I’ve been hearing on the news lately that due to Storm Arwen many thousands of properties in the north of England have been without gas and electricity for at least a fortnight and some have not even had running water. Some residents have had to move to hotels at the power companies’ expense.
This got me thinking how Victorian homes were ideally suited to weather violent storms, and how our ancestors’ lives differed so greatly from our own pampered ones.
Our house was built in the 1940s. It originally had 4 fireplaces; two upstairs and two downstairs. The upstairs ones were bricked up by previous owners, but when we had central heating installed we decided to leave the downstairs fireplaces intact. This has served us well in past storms, as when we have had power outages in the past we could simply light the open fires and hey presto, there was instant heat. The featured image shows one of our fireplaces in its roaring glory, and by the way it has an added use as a paper shredder if the electric version is out of action!
Many of the modern day homes are not built with fireplaces or chimneys, and quite a lot of older properties have radiators where a fireplace used to be. Property owners without working fireplaces are totally dependent on electricity / gas to heat their homes, and they would be the first to suffer from a power outage as of course gas boilers also need electricity. Victorians would be sitting around their coal-fired ranges or open fires, turning up their oil lamps, and wondering what all the fuss was about. Those with nearby working wells would also have had access to fresh water. They would have also got on well without fridges or labour-saving devices such as washing machines, but I expect that’s another story.
Of course, we are now aware that our dependency on coal has contributed to global warming, and governments are trying to phase it out. However, as this causes new houses to be built without chimneys and the sale of wood burners will eventually be banned, many property owners will be stuffed when it comes to weathering the increased frequency of storms and hurricanes caused by our over-use of coal in the first place. A type of anthracite-based smokeless coal is a greener option and produces 80% less smoke and 40% less carbon dioxide when burnt, but it is more expensive than normal coal and anyway, what good would it be for the people in new houses with no way of using it?
We all need to keep warm in winter, and people should not make themselves so dependent on electricity or gas. Out here in the country we have had many power cuts, one for a whole week, and fortunately we got on quite well with our two open fires (anthracite coal and wood from a tree that came down in the storm), candles, and a Calor gas barbeque. If electricity power cuts are going to be more frequent, then people need to be prepared.
However, Norway has already banned the use of oil and paraffin to heat buildings, and I wonder how long it will be before other countries follow their lead? If nobody is eventually allowed to use coal, wood, oil or paraffin to keep warm, then we all need to start knitting a mountain of woolly jumpers!
Stevie Turner 
We had an unusual situation here in California for a couple of years. With all the wildfires, the power company began turning off the electricity during windy and dry conditions. As this happened with more frequency, more people began purchasing generators. As soon as the power was cut, the generators would fire up. Sort of defeated the whole purpose. We’ve had more rain the past couple of months, and we haven’t had any power shutoffs this year.
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That doesn’t surprise me, as people will always put their own comfort first rather than the more wider community.
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Hi Stevie, I agree that people need to be prepared for power and water outages. Our climate is definitely changing, we are having another extremely wet, cool spring/early summer following on from an unusually cold winter. I just have to point out that it’s all very well for Norway that only has a population of 5.4 million. The UK is about 70 million if I remember correctly and SA has 60 million. Norway is also a wealthy country comparted to African countries. It will be a freezing day in hell before SA stops using coal fired power stations [or maybe the day someone provides funding for the change over and new technology required]. Currently, we are dealing with starving people who have no homes and live under bridges on on the street inside plastic bags.
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I think change will come eventually though. Thanks for your comment, Robbie.
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Yes our seventies built house had no chimney- I always prefer a gas job and we did find it can turn not be gas on and light with matches. Keep warm in the kitchen and boil up saucepans of water for drinks. But if Gas cut l as well. Water off as well? Rainwater butts, make fire out of all those branches in the insect hotel and boil up rain water. Next door have a wood burner. I’ll go round there!
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Yes, we have water butts too. They’re very useful.
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People think it’s crazy to have a fireplace in central Texas south, but it has come in handy. The tragedy is every time this sort of thing happens some fool brings their propane fired grill into the house for heat and cooking, only to end up dead after it burns off all the oxygen. Even the newscasters were saying “Don’t we do this story every year?”
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Sam never brings the BBQ into the house. If it’s bad weather he rigs up a canopy outside. Strangely enough our canister of gas was left at our house by the previous owners 30 years ago and we have been using it ever since then, and it never seems to run out. We have had countless BBQs and we are still using the same gas. Spooky!
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There’s a book in that. Like the wine in “The Bishop’s Wife.” I reached my dotage before I figured out to keep 2 propane tanks because they always seem to go out at the most inopportune moments. Like with partially cooked food on the grill.
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Ours seems everlasting. We can’t work it out, but so far in all the years we’ve been here, we’ve never had to pay for any BBQ gas.
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I like the sound of that. However over here if everyone had magic natural gas my daughter would be out of work!
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It is rather magical. It’s not as if the bottle of gas is as big as those we have on our caravan site. It’s tiny compared to those, and every year we have at least 6 barbeques. So that’s 180 barbeques at least that we’ve had from one bottle of gas.
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!!!!
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Nothing better than sitting next to a roaring fire on a cold wither’s morning, or day, or night, for that matter.
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Indeed.
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That’s why we had the wood burner installed. We can use it in power cuts, and the top is wide enough to heat water (or a casserole) as there is no gas alternative in Beetley. I have heard wood-burners will eventually be banned, but I doubt they will make you take out any already installed. You never know though!
Best wishes, Pete.
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It’ll be another money-making scheme for Boris to fine anybody who has any way of making heat in a power outage. We have an underground LPG gas tank, so not coming from the mains.
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I love the smell of wood fires even though we now hear the particles are dangerous.
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Yes, it’s a lovely smell. As I walk around our village I can smell it in the air as people have obviously lit their coal fires. Many of the houses in our village are old (one was built in 1745!) but the houses on the new estate obviously have central heating only.
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Everything is dangerous, Janet. If we took too much notice of what we read, we would never get out of bed. I’m sure beds are dangerous too! 🙂
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They are. Muscle weakness and bedsores occur if you spend too much time in them!
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