subject: Belling Range Cookers Family - London Living [print this page] The Kensington series of Belling range cookers, and its Country Chef counterparts, is a master class in matching design and look to a targeted market. Every one of the Kensington type Belling cookers looks like it should be installed in an opulently appointed Kensington kitchen: or, perhaps, face out through windows that overlook country property to the carport, where a Range Rover sits next to a couple of black Labradors.
Every Belling range cooker is finished in luxurious sheens: a beetle-shell black, or a clean array of graphite and silver. Even the knobs and handles are classy. Like parts on a Rolls Royce, nothing about Belling range cookers looks hurried, or cheap the oven door handles are a smooth, Aga-esque roll bar, and the dials that control heat to hobs and ovens look like the volume wheels on high end stereos. Each door is individually rounded and set, recalling the heavy swing doors of coal fired range cookers (which would naturally have occupied the spaces Belling range cookers are aiming for in their marketing).
Naming a product is always a tricky business. The name a company gives to the stuff it sells places it in a market, which means that the process of naming has to consider the market in which the company would like its product placed. The current roster of Belling range cookers is a perfect example. Belling cookers are almost entirely named for the most desirable and luxurious area of Englands fair capital and, where they arent, are called things like Country Chef: a name that continues the Belling theme of landed gentry from their town residences to those not so little places in the country. Welcome to the Kensington family of Belling cookers.
Prices are set accordingly, of course: a Belling range cooker will set a prospective owner back the best part of 1000 (with discount), or a tax-dodging 1300, roughly, if bought at full price. Unlike many products aimed at the Smart Set, though, Belling cookers are thoroughly qualified for their price tags. All Belling range cookers exude quality from every hinge, glass panel and brushed-steel fish grill cover. Belling cookers have had their prices set in accordance with their names, rather than having names invented in line with their prices.
Anyone looking for some real quality in the kitchen could do far worse than considering a Belling range cooker. They might cost a little more, but then so does a Roller and we all know how much quality comes under that skin.
Though the Kensington crew and their country counterparts arent really known for paying anything more than lip service to the environmentalists (the name Chelsea tractor, after all, comes from the exact same part of the capital that Belling cookers have taken their soubriquets from), Belling range cookers offer a pleasing variety of fuelling options.
A Belling range cooker can be bought either as a fully gas-fuelled beast (the advantages of which are well-known to anyone whos tried to cook a roast dinner on an electric hob); a duel-fuel best of both worlds package; or fully electric. All Belling cookers are well rated for energy saving and use minimal fuel when lighting.
