Warm memories of chilly times in a pre-electric heating rural West Cork!

As a chilly winter beckons, those days of guarding the immersion switch, heating a hot water bottle every night, and huddling close to the open fire, are springing to mind once more ….

TIMES PAST By Maria C Henry

THE hearth of our home was the kitchen range. Everything centred around it – heating, drying clothes, cooking, and baking. 

It provided constant hot water in the tank, and for the big iron kettle on the hob, too. I huddled beside it, did my homework near it, read stories in its warmth and visitors took cheer in its burn. 

Keeping the fire going throughout the day was an important job, because so much of my mam’s daily activities navigated it. Her day began before I got up by cleaning out the dirty ashes and lighting the fire. 

One of my chores before and after school was filling and fetching buckets of turf, logs, coal, anthracite, and slack. It was exhausting, so my mam was really lucky she had a helper! 

During the day, she constantly checked, stoked it, and fed the stove to keep the flame blazing. The primary fuel was turf from the in-law’s bog. The rough-cut sods of peat burnt pungently. It was a familiar aroma from most rural chimneys. 

I thought my mam was an expert on the weather like the ones on RTÉ. From the direction of the wind, she could tell if it was a baking day, washing and drying day. Or if a gale was coming, whether to light a fire at all. My mam knew her science. From her, I learned how to keep the fire going with as little fuel as possible.

Like most of my friends and neighbours back in Beara in the 1970s, we didn’t have central heating. That range heated the entire home, or at least it tried. Insulated buildings were not the rule, and the wooden framed windows in our house had seen better days. The curtains and the draft excluders kept the wafts at bay. The constant shouting, ‘close the door,’ if a blast of chilly air entered the room was the norm. Trapping the heat was the aim. 

The open fire in the sitting room was the hub of the evening. In its warmth, I played board games or cards with the TV on in the background. The fire guard hugged my pyjamas, warming up for bedtime. 

I remember sitting by the roasting flames, my legs mottled red and white from the heat of the fire. Every evening I tried to convince myself I didn’t need to go upstairs to the bathroom, afraid to face the arctic air of the hallway. 

Mam wrapped the hot water bottles in a towel and placed them into the bed half an hour before I hopped in. Along with the toasty pyjamas, I was snug under my layers of woollen blankets.

On frosty mornings, she would warm up my school clothes and tuck them in beside me when she woke me. In all the years she never learned it never incentivised me to get up, but the opposite and I wouldn’t want to leave my snuggly bed. 

Even in the summer, my mam would have to light the fire until she installed an electric cooker and the immersion. At first, she was delighted with the break from the drudgery of the open fire. But soon it became my mam’s worst nightmare. Electricity was a new concept during her early years, and having a bill coming in the door was new to the mindset that believed that if she didn’t have the cash, she couldn’t afford it. The bill was a worry because she never knew the amount owed until she opened the envelope with ESB stamped on the outside. 

My mam was strict with the use of the immersion. She was always sweating and fretting about that switch. 

She worried about it every time she left the house and guaranteed every Sunday on the way to mass. 

I’d ask her why she didn’t remember checking several times, but my mam’s head was always busy, so she told me. The minute she would be back in the house, she’d dash to the hot press and a sigh of relief would follow. 

As a feckless teenager, I knew the rules; if I left the switch flicked to ‘on’ overnight, or worse, all day long, and she found out? I might as well change my name and move to Australia because I’d never be welcomed under her roof again.

For years we’ve giggled at comedy sketches, TikTok clips and YouTube videos of the Irish Mammy and the immersion switch. The reality was the fear of the unknown electricity bill. It’s horrendous to see the headlines in The Southern Star of businesses receiving eye-watering summer bills, and the plight of many families having to choose ‘eat or heat.’ 

At a time, when the ESB has announced a staggering €357m profit for the first six months of this year, have the energy providers taken leave of their senses and taken us back decades to fear of the unknown? 

Maybe the suits up in the Dáil need a little ‘Mammy Cop On’ and review where the actual issues lie.