BFI

This Mining Review item about converting large Victorian houses to meet modern living and heating requirements has only the most tenuous connection with coal-mining. Indeed, there are no verbal references to coal at all, with just a passing reference to "modern solid fuel appliances" and a close-up of a newspaper ad with the message "Going smokeless? You can still enjoy the comfort of a real fire!".

Since the passage of the Clean Air Act a decade earlier, conversions like these had become a major growth industry. Often the building would be converted into flats, but even if left intact (as seems to be the case here) the heating system would be one of the first things to be overhauled, as it would make the biggest difference both to the quality and the cost of living.

Michael Brooke

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