The Aga for me is the ultimate "I am an upper class British" item.
When I was at uni I made friends with a fellow. He was into theatre, so the invited me and the rest of the gang up to his house. Dude had an empty 5 bedroom house that he used for theatre nights.
So I arrive and I see his stove is on.
"Bro you've left your stoves on?"
"Yeah it's an Aga"
"A what? I thought we were eating out?"
"Yeah we are, we just keep this thing on to heat the house. Useful for keeping food warm as well."
"Wait so you have an empty house that has an oven in it which is always on?"
"Yes, feels great when I arrive before a theatre night!"
In the early 90s a friend bought a five or six chamber Aga. He had lived in a house in Europe that had had one and he loved it. It cost a fortune to acquire and to install as the house had to be structurally reinforced to accommodate the weight of the oven. I remember that it took at least a couple of days to come up to a stable temperature across the whole oven. Each of the cooking chambers had a different temperature.
I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.
nojs · 2h ago
> I remember that it took at least a couple of days to come up to a stable temperature
Funny, the doc says 2-3 hours.
styren · 1h ago
That would be with coke, the modern AGAs are electric and definitely took more than a day before they were at temperature
a subgenre of the family saga genre of literature ... typically interpreted to refer to "a tale of illicit rumpy-pumpy in the countryside" ... it offers a "gingham-checked world" associated with "thatched English villages" and "ladies in floral dresses".
mhh__ · 5h ago
Still a class signifier amongst a certain type of Brit (particularly if it's been disposed of as a climate sacrifice)
DaiPlusPlus · 5h ago
> ...that is always on
with predictable results w.r.t. quality-of-living when your house already has central heating.
Agas used to be a very rural middle-class thing: it was how I imagine most countryside homes' heating and cooking worked, and it scaled from a modestly-sized cosy cottage to being in expansive stately homes. But postwar, and especially since the 1960s, Agas are just a status-symbol appliance to me.
Like, in North America, you know you've made it when you have a Wolf range and a Subzero fridge in your kitchen. In the UK, it's when you've got an Aga.
...probably because the only comfortable way to run the thing is by also having central air-conditioning installed and running full-blast while you use the thing.
crinkly · 4h ago
Semi-related, but they aren’t the status symbol they used to be. I know a guy who did quite well out of removing Agas for a few years because they are so expensive to run. Apparently up to 20x the cost of more sensible equipment. They were sold for scrap metal value because people weren’t buying them any more. He charged them to remove it and got paid scrap value.
The worst one I heard was someone who paid £10k for their top end Aga, found it was costing £700 a month to run and it was scrap in under a year.
Dead technology.
OJFord · 1h ago
Being less attainable makes it less of a status symbol?
£700pcm to run sounds like something's wrong anyway.
cycomanic · 38m ago
You're right. Wikipedia says 425kWh per week which in the UK would cost 26 pounds for gas. That's the two oven model, maybe he had a bigger unit which let's say used double, which comes to about 200 pounds per month still far away from 70o euros, but also pretty expensive to just run your oven.
justincormack · 31m ago
Most country houses don’t have gas so use oil or electric ones, mostly oil I think.
Rendello · 5h ago
By marketing legend David Ogilvy, who listeners of the marketing/advertising podcast Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly will no doubt have heard tale of.
shrubble · 4h ago
Also the author of a well known book, “Confessions of An Advertising Man”.
suchoudh · 1h ago
written by David Ogilvy ( GOAT of Advertising)
this gave me enough reason to read this.
pinkmuffinere · 5h ago
I'm really fascinated by this use of the apostrophe, where it seems to function similar to a colon or emdash:
> Find out all you can about your prospects before you call on them' their general living conditions, wealth, profession, hobbies, friends and so on
(another example)
>Tell the person who opens the door frankly and briefly what you have come for' it will get her on your side
Edit: also find this spelling of Nobel prize interesting:
When I was at uni I made friends with a fellow. He was into theatre, so the invited me and the rest of the gang up to his house. Dude had an empty 5 bedroom house that he used for theatre nights.
So I arrive and I see his stove is on.
"Bro you've left your stoves on?"
"Yeah it's an Aga"
"A what? I thought we were eating out?"
"Yeah we are, we just keep this thing on to heat the house. Useful for keeping food warm as well."
"Wait so you have an empty house that has an oven in it which is always on?"
"Yes, feels great when I arrive before a theatre night!"
I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.
Funny, the doc says 2-3 hours.
with predictable results w.r.t. quality-of-living when your house already has central heating.
Agas used to be a very rural middle-class thing: it was how I imagine most countryside homes' heating and cooking worked, and it scaled from a modestly-sized cosy cottage to being in expansive stately homes. But postwar, and especially since the 1960s, Agas are just a status-symbol appliance to me.
Like, in North America, you know you've made it when you have a Wolf range and a Subzero fridge in your kitchen. In the UK, it's when you've got an Aga.
...probably because the only comfortable way to run the thing is by also having central air-conditioning installed and running full-blast while you use the thing.
The worst one I heard was someone who paid £10k for their top end Aga, found it was costing £700 a month to run and it was scrap in under a year.
Dead technology.
£700pcm to run sounds like something's wrong anyway.
> Find out all you can about your prospects before you call on them' their general living conditions, wealth, profession, hobbies, friends and so on
(another example)
>Tell the person who opens the door frankly and briefly what you have come for' it will get her on your side
Edit: also find this spelling of Nobel prize interesting:
> he has actually won the Nobel Prices