As Sue Lane says, not many people grow up with a burning ambition to run a stove business. For her, office work beckoned. Having grown up on her family's farm near Garsington, she became an administrator with the NHS.

"I was about to move jobs — I had applied for a job with a pharmaceutical company — when I got a call from my cousin, Mike Jennings, asking me to manage the shop at Boundary Farm, which was just a little space selling potatoes, eggs and chickens, really.

"It was quite a career change — I was walking around in my high heels — but I expanded the farm shop, selling pet supplies and horse food as well as garden products."

By the time her husband David joined, the business was flourishing. As a horticulturalist with years of experience running garden centres, he was able to set up a nursery. But 16 years ago, with a young family to look after, they re-assessed their lives.

"Together, we were working 24/7 and we didn't have any family time. The children used to enjoy helping, but there was no time."

It was Mr Lane’s father Keith who provided a solution. He had been selling a few wood-burning stoves from his home, the Manor House in Lewknor, in spare time from his job as a civil engineer with Buckinghamshire County Council.

By this time, he had started renting a small space in former chicken sheds at Boundary Farm, and was ready to retire.

With price-cutting competition from supermarkets and DIY outlets, profit margins in the garden centre business were shrinking fast. So they made the hard decision to shut the farm shop and nursery, and concentrate on selling stoves.

For a few years they had a relatively quiet life, running what was a small cottage industry next door to Mrs Lane's childhood home. At first they were competing with only a handful of suppliers in the UK.

Mrs Lane continued: "Three years ago there was a sudden jump in gas and electricity prices and the whole stove industry went stratospheric. We pretty much doubled our turnover, and year-on-year we are still growing. So many people are hooked on wood burning now."

Having set up the business before the current boom, they already had agencies with most of the main brands, and were well-placed to benefit from the demand. The growth was such that the couple recently won a holiday as 12th biggest UK dealership for Jotul Scan.

In the past 18 months, they have taken on three more staff to cope with the expansion.

Mrs Lane said: "Everyone is worried about what's happening to gas and oil, and they want the security of wood."

Wood is particularly attractive to the environmentally aware. According to Government figures, about half the UK's carbon emissions are currently produced through heating, 95 per cent of which are generated by burning fossil fuels — either directly with gas and oil, or indirectly via electricity from coal-burning power stations such as Didcot.

The Government is planning to include wood and biomass boilers in the Renewable Heat Incentive subsidies — an opportunity which Manor House Stoves is planning to embrace with enthusiasm.

To the Lanes, the attraction of modern stoves is self-evident, and they say some buyers are so enthusiastic that they come back to buy one for almost every room in the house.

Mr Lane said: "An open fire is about ten per cent efficient. Some people reckon they consume so much air from the home that they suck warm air from the rest of the house.

“A stove, with your ability to control it, can be 80 per cent efficient, and any emissions are burnt off. The fuel consumption compared to an open fire is tiny. They are safe and economical. Rather than being a slave to an open fire, a stove is a slave to you."

Having grown up wanting to be a gardener, he has transferred his passion to the technology of stoves, and has no regrets about his change of career.

"We were pricking out plants at the weekend, and at least stoves don't need watering 24/7. I loved being a nurseryman — that was my vocation. It's now a hobby and it's become much more enjoyable."

His enthusiasm for stoves has resulted in no less than four stoves being installed in the home where Mrs Lane has lived since childhood, next door to what has now become the Boundary Business Park.

There are plans to expand the showroom, with more demonstration stoves heating the former chicken sheds.

"We are installing a biomass boiler at home, with an accumulator tank which can store heat from any renewable source — solar, biomass or geo-thermal.

“Once we have our own system and we understand how it works, we will be able to advise people and demonstrate it. We're also setting up a store selling pellets made from waste wood. We are not just standing still — we are looking to the future."