Kitchen Stoves

The opening of the newly restored ‘Churchill Suite’ in 2003 marked the first step in the expansion of the War Rooms into almost the full extent of its final wartime shape. The suite of rooms was allotted to Churchill to allow his private office staff to be on hand and to provide his wife and his closest colleagues sheltered accommodation during enemy air raids. As part of this set-up, a room was organized as a dining room, while another was set aside as a kitchen to service it.

Most of the major rooms of the CWR were photographed shortly after the war and, using the one surviving picture of the kitchen, a nationwide search began for two identical stoves that matched those in the photograph. Eventually, with the help of the BBC and the Daily Telegraph, two Jackson electric stoves, were found in private homes in southern England which were near perfect matches to those in the picture. Other kitchen accoutrements were given by private donors or were purchased in flea-markets, but a number of pots, copper pans and utensils were given by the grand daughter of the Churchill’s wartime cook, Mrs Landemare, who had been allowed to take them with her when she finally retired from their service.