By the way, to my recollection, there never was any FRONT kitchen in any house I ever walked into!!
It usually wasn’t the “kitchen” either – just “back kitchen”. I’ve only come across this in Liverpool, but maybe other people could enlighten us?
I understand that kitchens usually were, and are, at the back. Good stuff in the parlour at the front, just in case anyone looked in. At the back was kitchen, outside toilet, back yard leading on to the alley.
My good friend, Google, tells me that a back kitchen is a room off the main kitchen, a scullery. Maybe we all came from aristocratic families where the servants would dress the game and gut the fish in a side room….
The only thing I can think of is that a lot of cooking was done on open hearths. My great-grandmother was apparently a terrible cook, but this was how she prepared food. On my Dad’s side, I recall a story about someone knocking the pot over and getting cinders in the evening meal. If you’d paid for a coal fire it made sense to eke out every drop of heat.
It seems the back kitchen may be making a bit of a come back, now the kitchen is an open plan designer area where you sit around the Aga, eating whatever the Deliveroo man has just brought round.
