My father used to put lambs in our old Aga to keep them alive. With towels for insulation on the floor of the low-heat bottom oven and the door thrown wide open, the great iron cooker became an emergency incubator for dozens of new-born lambs that had struggled for life after birth on a cold March night.

Sometimes my brother and I would spoon milk formula into their mouths while they lay there fighting for life.

My mother loved the Aga too, just so long as someone else went to the coal bunker for fuel to keep it burning. And did we keep it burning - all day, every day of the year. It helped to make our large kitchen a cosier place for 20 years, becoming as much a piece of the fabric of our family as the sheepdogs that curled up beside it to luxuriate in its warmth.

Low carbon footprint it was not, and as far as cooking food went it was, to say the least, idiosyncratic. Good for what you would call old-fashioned roasted British fare (not so kind to the lambs now) but almost useless if you wanted a stir-fry. My mother went on free cooking courses showing you “how to get the best from your Aga”, which included a bizarre instruction to fry eggs in the top oven. Imagine learning to cook, but then having to learn all over again to meet the requirements of a particular stove.

Of course, the massive cooker was too large to move with us when we upped sticks in 1988, and my mother bought a new model for the new house. By now, thanks to the likes of Maeve Binchy, they were fast becoming a middle-class status symbol.

Aga's Henry Ford-like approach to colour choice and style was disappearing and a new oil-fired Aga in a tasteful pastel hue became the centrepiece of our new kitchen.

But, as her new Aga gained class status, so Mum was less keen to let it be used as a sheep incubator. She jealously guarded it against dirty dogs, and all possible scratch threats, and its use by anyone but her was strictly by appointment only.

It proved, ultimately, to be symbolic of what was by now happening to our family, as the warmth with which Aga had so completely filled those earlier years had also begun to fade.

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