One of the things that attracted us to Lady Stardust was the cosy aspect of the berth below deck, particularly the very comforting-looking stove.  It spoke of frosty mornings wrapped up warm against the elements, looking out over a frozen river (illuminated by a clear winter sun, naturally) whilst munching on a bacon sandwich and drinking a fortifying cup of tea.  We were, by now, spending quite a few evenings and weekends on the Lady, simply enjoying the feeling of being in the country in the middle of east London.

It took a particularly wet Friday evening in mid-Autumn for us to tentatively try the stove for the first time.  It took a little time to get used to the controls (there are only two, but it takes some observation for a non fire-owning townie to get to grips with whatever difference they made) but we soon had a roaring, smokeless coal fire going.

At which point I noticed how much smoke was escaping from the stove.  This was precipitated by the fact that the lever that secured the door shut appeared not only to have sheared off but also to have welded itself in an open position with no apparent desire to loosen or act in a generally fastener-like manner.  Fortunately there wasn’t much smoke from the smokeless fuel but the smell was quite strong and I was very unhappy about going to sleep for fear of carbon monoxide poisoning!

Clearly the stove needed to be mended.  This much I knew. The problem was, how?  As is so often the case, I turned to the internet for inspiration.  I started to search for companies that sold stoves, to see if I could see any that looked like my own.  I singled out about 6 or 7 suppliers and sent them an email explaining that I wanted to buy a new door latch, asking whether they recognised the stove from the attached picture and if so how I would set about my task.

I didn’t expect much but I thought it was worth a try.  To my surprise, within a couple of days all of the suppliers I had contacted responded to me.  Most of them didn’t recognise the stove, but one of them said it looked like a Poacher from Bernard Davis stoves.  I looked at their website and it did, indeed, look much like my own stove.  I repeated my request to Bernard Davis and they responded saying that my stove looked very much like a Poacher.  There were quite a lot of inferior quality Chinese copies of this stove (that don’t use the same quality cast iron and tend to crack) but I could tell whether mine was geniune or not by the presence of the ‘BD’ logo at the bottom on the front.

I had looked all over my stove for some kind of identifying mark when I set out on the road to sourcing a new door lever, and I had somehow missed this mark (which is quite large and was quite present)!  So, I had a poacher.  Could I buy a new locking handle, I enquired?  ’Yes’ was the response, for the grand total of £9.  I couldn’t believe it!  I sent them a cheque and a couple of days later I received a new handle.  Now the only problem was how to remove the old one.  I took some months to do this, in part because I had to find someone who could advise me as to how to do it (I had to drill it out) and partly because I spent some time considering the best way to put this plan into action.

I finally got up the courage to drill out the old handle when I had the loan of a particularly powerful drill for installing new deck furniture.  It took courage because cast iron is notoriously brittle and I had visions of ending up with a pile of iron dust where my stove door used to be.  Nonetheless, when I actually got around to the task it was surprisingly easy.  The door was secured in place with pins which I removed with a centre-punch and hammer, and the handle took about 10 minutes to remove.  I now have a fully functioninig Poacher stove with locking door (although I have now noticed that the asbestos rope that seals the door needs replacing too, but that seems much easier to solve than finding a new handle).

Lady Stardust, Stove