A daleswoman with a hi-tech kitchen had placed her old black kettles on a wall outside the house and was using them - as my picture on the right shows - as plant pots.

Years ago, when visiting a Dales home, whether it be a rambling farmhouse or a lile cottage in t'village, my eyes immediately went to the fireplace. Summer and winter alike, there was a cheery glow and a big black kettle with a song in its heart.

Inevitably, the lady of the house would say: "Hev a cup o' tea lad." Sometimes she would deliver it with a freshly-baked scone, smothered in butter. Now it's more than likely that the hot water comes from one of those stately electric kettles with a marker to indicate the water level. It's worked out in cupfuls.

Lighting the kitchen fire was a year-long morning ritual. Sometimes you might "bank t'fire up" and use the embers to bring in the new day's fire into glorious life. This and a set-pot in the corner of an outbuilding were the only means of heating water.

At a Craven farm, where there was no piped water until 1935, it was borne from a well in the yard, through several rooms to the boiler beside the fire in the big flagged kitchen. When the water had been heated, some of it was carried back through the house and "we staggered away to feed the calves."

The set-pot, which was of iron, was heated by a fire which was kindled using stems of heather from the moor - the blackened bits left when the moor was swiddened, or burnt, to encourage a fresh growth of heather.

There was much competition for the heated water. A housewife who had laboriously filled the set-pot with water, and who had risen bright and early on Monday to light the fire, prior to washing the clothes, put some flakes of soap in the water. Then her husband would not be tempted to use it for feeding calves!

In the kitchen, the precursor of the fancy modern sink was a slopstone, with its single tap, for what was called "soft water". This was the water which fell on the roof as good clean rain and was caught in the guttering to be directed into a flagstone cistern. From here, water was gravity-fed into the house.

You'd be daft to sup that water, for the cistern was held in place by iron bands and sealed by red or white lead. Soft water was intended for washing, needing little soap to create a lather.

At a big Victorian farmhouse, I saw a slopstone with no less than three taps - one for cold water, one for hot water and the third for "soft" water.

The big black kettle spent its days crooning to itself on its perch by a fire set in a gargantuan range, complete with oven and side boiler. The range was kept smart by a weekly application of black-lead. It was, said one housewife, a "two-hour job."

Attached to the ceiling was a rack for drying clothes and oatcakes. The last-named, as they dried, resembled wash-leathers. On the flagged floor in front of the fireplace stood a pegged rug.

John Wesley denounced tea as a wicked drug from the Orient. An old friend of mine liked his tea "hot as hell and black as t'fireback." In contrast was "shamrock tea", made with three leaves.

Old Jack, an Austwick character, supped tea which varied in strength. He had a basin, into which he poured a packet of tea. He added water as required. When the strength was too weak to be noticed, he deftly deposited the leaves on the back of the fire and started again.

Dad, as the head of a farming family was invariably known, liked to have his tea in a pint pot and to sup it while sitting beside the fire.

Tea being a herb, it must be brewed, said perfectionists, who also ensured that teapot was warmed through before the "mashing" process began. A walking friend calls it "broddling" and insists on supervising the process. It was aged before tea-bags became acceptable.

Elizabeth, wife of Arthur Raistrick, the Dales antiquary and historian, had a fund of information about domestic life in the Dales.

She once told me about the brass tea urns which were popular (my wife's family had such an item, which came from Kettlewell) and mentioned that coffee cups had no saucers.

They shared a saucer with a teacup as no one wanted tea and coffee at the same time - "and", she added, "every housewife knows that saucers always outlasts their cups."

Except in one household, where Dad's saucer was accidentally broken. His wife lamented: "Now - what's he bahn to drink his tea out of?"

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.