Crumbs! The toaster that's still going 56 years on

When Joan Lopes picked out a shiny silver toaster as a present for her parents, little did she realise it would still be working some 56 years later.

Since she bought it in 1951, the simple but stylish two-slicer has browned to perfection thousands of pieces of bread - along with the occasional teacake - serving three generations of the same family.

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Mrs Lopes, then Miss Bentley, selected the toaster from a department store in Ipswich as a present for her parents' silver wedding anniversary.

At the time, they were still something of a luxury - with most people still toasting bread over the open fire or on the kitchen stove.

Then in 1949, Morphy Richards introduced the first popular British-made automatic toaster in a chrome finish.

It was this that caught the eye of Mrs Lopes, who was working for the Civil Service and used a sizeable chunk of her wages to buy the new gizmo for around £4 4s.

Her parents were "delighted" with the gift and the toaster was swiftly put to regular use at the family home in Ipswich.

When Mrs Lopes married Carl, an RAF flight lieutenant, she moved abroad. But her parents Edward and Connie Bentley kept using the toaster.

In 1977 Mrs Lopes and her husband, both 80, moved back to the city from Germany and Mrs Bentley, a widow, moved in with them, bringing the toaster with her.

"It's been in almost constant use since then," said grandmother-offour Mrs Lopes, who now lives in Hadleigh, near Ipswich.

"It doesn't get used every day, but probably three or four times a week. In fact, my husband used it this morning. It still looks quite contemporary.

"I don't really question how it has kept going so long, it's become a part of the family after all this time.

"But it does seem the more modern appliances never last very long, they have built-in obsolescence."

In its six decades of service the only part ever to be replaced on the toaster has been the cable.

Automatic toasters first appeared in Britain in the late 1930s. The Morphy Richards, influenced by pre-war American models, was patented in 1948.