What is it - ED Deane & Beale No1 Cooker thingy....

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haaammit

haaammit

haaammit

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This item has come into my possession - it looks like this:





The nameplate says:

ED Deane & Beale.LTD
No1 SMALL 1952
CAT. NO. J.B.11400
LONDON

A bit of googling shows it to be one one these:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Ed-Deane-amp...e-Stove-Cooker-Fireplace-Insert-/251395197075

Although that is a No4 SMALL

It's clearly some kind of cooker/stove, but if you look closely, mine has the Crow's Foot/Broad Arrow British Army symbol on it under the ED Deane & Beale bit as does the one linked to above. I also have a two part chimney/smokestack, some shelves/grates and a brush and rake thingy.

Google is being very secretive, or my googlefu is bust. What is this thing? It's only ever been fired up once (by me with smokeless fuel in the fire basket). I was going to incorporate it into an outside cooker area with a kind of tarp/canvas roof over the top, but a house move means that isn't gonna happen now :/

Did the British Army ever use these things? What's it worth? Where is best to sell it - it weighs an absolute tonne.
 
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Mobile cooker for the army? Before modern logistics the army had to take everything with them including the ability to cook. Thought that stopped a long time ago though.
 
The ED Deane & Beale Number 1 Small is a stove that has managed to make it's way into culinary folklore amongst those in the know. The Number 1 Small was the prototype for all other EDD&B stoves ever made; all commonly renowned for their ability to produce a wide variety of hot foods with minimal skill. However, it was their excellence in baking bread that was their most coveted trait.

ED Deane and John Beale made their cast iron 'Number 1' stove in a rented workshop and little did they know that it would be their finest work. Whilst they tried for years to replicate the stove's efficiency and quality, they could never quite match it. These inferior models became known as the Number 2, Number 3, Number 4 and so on. They experimented with materials, size and colour, but were unable to ever match the quality of their Number 1 stove.

Eventually, driven mad by failure and what was rumoured to be an opiate addiction, ED Deane killed his partner, Ian Beale and cut him into small pieces to make a casserole out of him in the Number 1 stove. Legend has it that it was the finest casserole ever made and won first prize at the Hertfordshire County Faire in 1963. Without his partner to assist him in continuing to replicate that most exquisite of stoves, ED Deane went into exile, but not before burying the Number 1 stove. Tattered pages from a mostly destroyed diary found in his deserted East London home suggest that he was driven mad by the screams of Ian Beale he thought were coming from the inside of the Number 1 stove.

Some say that ED Deane went to live in the mountains of some far flung land, whereby he spent the remainder of his days descending further into his culinary madness, carving designs for stoves into the walls of caves with his fingernails and teeth. Others say he was unable to bear the tell-tale stove that he could hear beating below the ground and took his own life by dropping a Number 6 Large stove on his head from great height. But none of these stories have ever been confirmed.

What can probably be confirmed here though, is that you have a stove that is worth something to any clued up collector or antique dealer. I'm not saying that it will make it to Sotheby's, but you could certainly get a princely sum if the stove is indeed genuine. I don't think it would be unreasonable to expect something in the region of about tree fiddy.
 
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