‘I’ll probably hit the wrong place and ruin it,’ Georgia displays an uncharacteristic lack of confidence, ‘but if you insist.’ She smacks the claws of the hammer into the board, at chest height, where the space above the oven would be, and levers the board towards her. She does it again, and again, until there is a channel across the top, and she can push her fingers into the gap and give the board a tug. At first nothing happens, and she leans backwards, bracing herself, legs apart, feet planted on the floorboards. There is a cracking sound, and she starts to tumble backwards. Stan leaps to catch her as the wall gives way and a large sheet of board and plaster fall into the room. Through the cloud of grey dust, a huge black hunk of metal is visible below the mantelpiece at last.

Stan picks the hammer up from the floor and passes it back to Georgia. She starts again, pulling off smaller sections of board. Little by little, the whole range is revealed.

‘You’ll be able to use the frame for kindling if I chop it up for you,’ says Stan. ‘But first we need a brush and a shovel.’ They stand aside as he sweeps the floor slowly, sprinkling water onto the mess to minimise the amount of dust that billows up. His floppy white hair has fallen forward and he pushes it back and out of his eyes.

Tess can see that he must once have been a good-looking man. He still is. She drags herself back to the present and examines the range. ‘That’s quite a lump of ironwork.’

Georgia nods. ‘It wasn’t just a cooker, it heated all the hot water when I was growing up as well. It had to be on all year, and if it was raining we used to dry the clothes on the pulley in here. It was cosy in the winter, but I can remember it being absolutely sweltering in the summer. Annie was so, so pleased to have an electric cooker instead. Nowadays we look at something like this with rose-tinted spectacles, but it wasn’t easy to manage or to keep stoked up. There was definitely an art to it.’

‘I expect it would polish up a treat,’ says Stan. ‘It’s a fine example of domestic engineering.’