RT Journal Article
T1 �As Snug as a Bug in a Rug�
A1 Lynda Nead
YR 2017
VO 9
IS Spring 2018
K1 post-war Britain
K1  coal fire
K1  family
K1  nation
K1  commonwealth
K1  advertising
K1  journalism
K1  homes
K1  heating
AB This article examines the layers of meaning and value attached to the image of the open coal fireside in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War. Although the open fire has a much longer economic, social and cultural history, it is argued here that after 1945 it took on new, emergent meanings that tapped into pressing contemporary debates concerning the nature of the modern British nation, the home and the family. Whilst writers often evoked the experience of the open fire as a timeless comfort, addressing basic human needs, the fireside of post-war British journalism and illustration was a very modern thing indeed, able to express specific debates arising from the requirements of reconstruction and modernisation. The almost folkloric associations of the open fire made it harder in the 1950s to legislate against domestic smoke than it was to regulate industrial pollution. Vested interests drew on the powerful rhetoric of the coal fire to combat the smoke pollution reports of the early 1950s and the growing inevitability of legislation. The coal fire was part of a post-war chain of being that started with the domestic hearth and progressed to the nuclear family, the self-contained home, the nation, and ultimately to the Commonwealth.
NO The phrase was used in ‘“Blitz” and “Blight”’, Picture Post, 14 July 1945, p 26. There is an extensive literature on housing and planning in the post-war period; amongst the most helpful and detailed are: Hasegawa, 1992; Tiratsoo, 2000; Bullock, 2002; Larkham and Nasr, eds, 2004; Flinn, 2012; Clapson and Larkham, eds, 2013.
NO For an excellent account of British debates about domestic heating and pollution in the first half of the twentieth century see Mosley, 2007. For a useful history of the electric fire see Wyatt, 2007, and on oil heating in post-war Britain see Cartwright.
NO Boiler and radiator manufacturers advertised new designs in both specialist and general press; see for example National Smoke Abatement Society, 1952, p 38; 1959, p 7; Architectural Review, 1955, p lx.
NO Mr Therm was named after the unit of energy that appeared on gas bills. See Stephen Mosley, 2016, p 204. Also ‘Mr Therm Goes into the Cinema Business’, 1954, p 1010.
NO On domestic coal fires and smoke in the nineteenth century see Brimblecombe, 1988; Mosley, 2003; and Thorsheim, 2006. On the home as a metaphor for the nation in wartime see Lant, 1996.
NO The argument that the gas fire could never stimulate the visual imagination was also put in ‘Focal Point’, The Times, 1946. The suggestion that the Conservative 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/witness/hygiene/smoke.
NO Ovaltine is a milk-based drink, containing barley, malt and cocoa. In 1953 the brand had been boosted when Sir Edmund Hillary had drunk Ovaltine during his Everest climb.
PB The Science Museum Group
SN 2054-5770
LA eng
DO 10.15180/180902
UL http://journal.sciencemuseum.org.uk/browse/issue-09/as-snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug/
CR Architectural Review, 1955, April
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CR Barthes, R, 1972, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers, 1st pub. 1957 (London: Paladin, 1972)
CR Brimblecombe, P, 1988, The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution since Medieval Times (London and New York: Routledge)
CR Bullock, N, 2002, Building the Post-War World: Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Britain (London and New York: Routledge)
CR Cartwright, A, http://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/06/grenfell-fire-gentrification-real-estate-neglect (accessed 6 July 2017)
CR Clapson, M and Larkham, P J, eds, 2013, The Blitz and Its Legacy: Wartime Destruction to Post-War Reconstruction (Farnham: Ashgate)
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CR Mosley, S, 2016, ‘Selling the Smokeless City: Advertising Images and Smoke Abatement in Urban-Industrial Britain, circa 1840–1960’, History and Technology, 32/2, pp 201–11
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CR Orwell, G, 1945, ‘The Case for the Open Fire’, Evening Standard, 8 December, p 6
CR Parker, R, 2005, ‘The Big Smoke: Fifty Years after the 1952 London Smog’, seminar held 10 December 2002, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London (London: Centre for History in Public Health)
CR Roberts, M, 1989, ‘Designing the Home: Domestic Architecture and Domestic Life’, in Allan, G and Crow, G, eds, Home and Family: Creating the Domestic Sphere (Basingstoke: Macmillan), pp 33–47
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CR Stobbs, J, 1955, ‘Let’s Keep the Home Fires Burning Without Wasting Heat and Fuel’, Picture Post, 12 March, pp 36–7
CR Thorsheim, P, 2006, Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800 (Athens: Ohio University Press)
CR Tiratsoo, N, 2000, ‘The Reconstruction of Blitzed British Cities, 1945–55: Myths and Reality', Contemporary British History, 14/1, pp 27–44
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WT Science Museum Group Journal
OL 30