It was finally removed in the late seventies and shipped to India to be cut up for scrap by six year olds with oxyacetylene torches. In its place we received a modern washer and dryer, stacked on top of each other in the utility room/workshop. Dad plumbed and wired them in and rigged up a proper exhaust system. And so we entered the 20th century....
Our other antediluvian appliance during early childhood was a coke furnace. It sat gloomily in the corner of the kitchen and required frequent feeding with a smokeless fuel called anthracite.
(For years I told adults that our house was heated with anthrax. Might explain the distinct lack of visitors!) Anthracite was an engineered product and consisted of sooty, ovoid briquettes that were delivered by an equally ovoid and sooty gentleman and humped into our coal-shed on his back. They were then loaded into a funnel-ended coal scuttle from which Dad would pour into the furnace. This heated water for two cast-iron radiators. One was downstairs, by the stairs, and the other was upstairs on the landing. If you really cranked up the furnace to near melting point the downstairs one would give you a third-degree burn just by looking at it and the upstairs one would make eerie gurgling noises and emit a weak and pallid warmth suitable only for drying socks you didn't need that week. He seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time pouring fuel into the top and carting out piles of ash from the bottom.
