When winters really were harsh
Saturday 24th January 2009, 8:00PM GMT.
Clun, 1982, from Carol Sherwood
These days the temperature only has to drop below freezing for folk to start complaining about the “harsh winter”. And if there’s a dusting of snow… well, chaos is compulsory.
It is, though, many years since Shropshire had a really severe winter. In a recent feature we threw the spotlight on 1982, when on January 10 the temperature at Edgmond plunged to minus 26.1C, the lowest ever recorded in England.
For more weather pictures click here
The winter of 1962-1963 was famous, with blizzards and temperatures hovering around freezing for weeks, while older folk may point to the snowstorms of 1947, and the bitter January of 1940.
We asked for memories of bad winters, and here are some of the contributions . . .
Alan Hibbert, of Bettisfield, was in his first year at Harper Adams Agricultural College, Newport, during the 1963 winter, and was allocated a single room in the Ancellor House.
“We were very lucky as we were the only students allowed to have heaters in our rooms. The rest of the rooms in college were not allowed any electric heaters as the power supply could not take the load, so first years in Boughey Hall and Adams Hall had to wear several layers of clothes to keep warm. Those halls of residence have since been knocked down.
“Snow first fell on Boxing Day 1962, so there was a good thick layer everywhere when we returned to college after Christmas. There was still snow on the ground when we went home for half term and again when we broke up for Easter. Then the following half term, in the ‘summer term’, there was still snow lying under the hedges, though most of the rest had melted,” said Alan.
Another memory was the outdoor pigs.
“Mr Luscombe, the livestock lecturer, used to record daily the temperature in the sows’ arks, and never did it fall below freezing, even though they were out in the middle of a field. He was very proud of this as he had designed the arks himself and the sows and litters thrived in them.”
Carol Sherwood, who was living at home with her parents in Clun – they still live there, although Carol herself now lives in Cardiff – sent us some photos showing the January 1982 snow.
Marcus Brampton of Priorslee emailed in, recalling that the snow fell rapidly on Boxing Day 1962. At the time he was 20 and living with his parents at Belbroughton, Worcestershire. He worked as a quantity surveyor with Wimpey, based at Redditch, and the day after Boxing Day set off to work in his Ford Popular.
There were snowdrifts up to eight feet high and he helped a motorcyclist and sidecar who had plunged into one.
“When I reached work there were very few people there. In fact all the labour was then laid off for 10 weeks, as the temperature failed to rise above freezing except for maybe an hour or two in the day, and our construction method involved pouring concrete into formwork for the walls of the houses.
“We worked in wooden cabins, with roofing felt on the floor and no insulation at all.
“The site supervision happily played cards and read newspapers, while my boss and I worked on old final accounts for the first couple of weeks. Then they asked us if they could assist us but unfortunately we had to decline.
“Happy days, but we survived to tell the tale.”
By Toby Neal
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i am old enough to remember the harsh winter of 1947 which lasted from january to march with heavy falls of snow followed by severe flooding in salop after the thaw
i recall wood pigeons stripping the sprouts off the plants and sparrows strutting around the snowy lawn without tail feathers, as they previously had snow balls on their tails which pulled their feathers off.
i remember in march looking down from the kingsland bridge onto rescuers trying to rescue a lady in a riverside cottage.
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Shrewsbury 1982 – I remember the Severn frozen solid at Greyfriars bridge, but I can recall my mum claiming that in 1946 the ice was that thick that a bus was driven across it. Now ‘thats’ a health and safety issue! For all our communication and technical advances I don’t think society would cope if we had those winters again.
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anyone under the age of forty is nothing but a wingeing wimp when it comes to winter these days
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IN 1947 ON THE RACECOURSE BY OSWESTRY THE SNOW WAS UP TO MY SHOULDER .WE HAD A SINGLE WALKING TRACK TO GET YO TOWN.IT LASTED FROM JANUARY 30 UNTILL THE MIDDLE OF MARCH.
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The winter of 1947 really took some beating and I have not known one like it since. We were not really out of the war then, heating – mostly by coal was expensive and coal itself was spasmodic in getting to the users. Adults seemed all doom and gloom but for us kids, it was magical.
Really thick snow lay around for weeks, schools were open one day, closed the next and youngsters never knew where they were but it was a time of great fun and activities took place which seem so strange now. I lived down from the Cemetery in Longden Road, we went sliding and scating on the frozen ponds in the fields below Ridgebourne Road on the bye-pass. The ice must have been at least a foot thick and we stayed out until ten or so at night. Lives were carefree, without worry or concern and we got up to things which kids today can only dream about.
Grangefields and the estate opposite the (then) Priory Girls School had not been built and we went tobogganing in what was then known as “Bankie Fields”, the fields alongside the Potts Railway line opposite Meole Village. The Bank was very long and almost vertical and injuries were many with sometimes as many as 75 kids in the field with toboggans of every size and description and with a surface as hard as rock and looking and feeling like glass, those who had a sledge that ripped the surface up quickly knew about it and fights and yarrooing were commonplace with the guilty party being told to take off or stop using their sledge.
A carpenter with a little shed at the junction of Upper Road and the Bye-pass ran a lucrative business selling toboggans, 4/- (20p) for one with half moon metal runners and 3/- (15p) for one without. I worked a paper round for 8/- (40p) a week for the Newsagent (Palmers) opposite the Cemetery gates and the envy of other kids with my purpose built, “professionally made” metal runnered sledge was something to behold. The Cresta run wasn’t in it, the speeds we got up to were quite phenomenal and if someone walking back up the bank after their run met up with someone hurtling down in the middle of their’s, the outcome was very often dire. But we survived, a couple of legs were broken I recall but nobody drowned on the ponds, we used to get soaking wet through from melting snow,cold’s were disregarded, holes in our clothes from coming off our sledges were quickly sewn up and life went apace.
The only time we got into trouble with the law was when we poured gallons of water down the “Cinder Path” (connecting Longden Road to Kingsland) from top to bottom and turned that into a 150 yard sheet of glass that stopped people walking up it. “Smiler” Branson, the copper from Meole hunted us all out and we didn’t do that again.
Why can’t kids these days enjoy themselves like we used to do all those years ago. When I visit the Cemetery these days, I can’t help relating to my wife what we used to get up to when we were school kids. She now walks ahead as she had heard it so many times.
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stuart, we grew up not far apart and i suspect at a similar time.i lived in grange rd off roman rd and watched over time the grangefields estate being built. you may have lived somewhere near the red barn or williamsons coach depot. anyway the witer of ’47 was horendous, for the sustained snow, ice and at the end of it all those terrible floods. then roman rd was the towns first bypass and the heavy lorries kept going as well as the s8 midland red bus to kennedy rd and the s18? to the cemetry. in those days the shop contained in a shack next to the red barn pub was a lifeline.
as stuart said this extreme harsh winter had a back drop of rationing, fuel shortages and powercuts. people who remeber this winter will treat 1962/1963 and 1980/1981 as bad but incomparable with ’47
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I remember fondly when it snowed so much you had to get out of the 1st floor window to walk to school (which was still open). We once enjoyed ourselves by covering a one mile stretched of the old A5 in water which iced over very quickly – and then played shove penny – the distances achieved where quite incredible at the time. However, a local bobby told us about the misery we had caused to other people, we took our ticking off and where made to go to the funerals in spring.
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Most people just get on with it. It’s the likes of the shropshire star that use words like ‘caos’to discribe it when there is just a bit of cold weather.
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I lived almost opposite Williamson’s Garage Devon, that’s a coincidence, so you were one of those toffee nosed “Kingsland Grange wallahs” were you. The battles we had with them in the fields down the Cinder Path were like a Richard Burton Roman saga. The Bowery Boys had nothing on us. Gangs are not knew, they existed in those days and if one was caught on one’s own when the “little Lord Fauntelroys” from Kingsland Grange were about, one got a good kicking so did the lads from Shrewsbury school, if they were smaller than us, we gave them one. But I shouldn’t admit to villainy, we called it “playing” in my day even if we did end up with black eyes.
There were some houses in Grangefields, not many at that time but we used to get into trouble for going on the building site when they were doing the others. Even in those days, I said that I would own a specific bungalow in Roman Road when I was able to do so, I won’t name it but the walls were painted white!! and in 1986 after a gypsy like existence most of my working life, I returned to Shrewsbury, we went to look with the intention of buying it but we took one look at the traffic on the bye – pass which passed the rear garden and settled for one in Port Hill.
Now, just think, after Grangefields, you are a Labourite and me after Longden Road are a Toryite, I bet you were one of those who had toboggan runners which ripped the surface up as well, can’t trust any of those Labourites.
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hi stuart, sorry to disapoint you but i was neither, at k/grange or the schools, but further away from trouble at prestfelde prior to a school that was the making of me, ludlow grammar school.
i loved the old cinder path, without ice, it was such a nice walk via t/n kingsland into the town and look down on those terrible floods. i haveseveral old photos of williamson coaches and their depot. happy days in those late 1940′s and very early 1950′s
thanks toby and the star for the opportunity to exchange memories of our county town in the good old days. floreat salopia.
ps i rememember the builders on grangefields were someone called sherrat?. our semi cost about £300 new in 1939, when i was thought of!. oh on politics i am not a labourite, but could meet you halfway as a left wing tory, er similar to new labour? any way tea break over back on our heads in the snow!!
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it shows climate change is a myth put out by greenie lefties who want to control our lives
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Stuart…I too have happy memories of the 1947 winter, however, have experienced many much harder winters since, and, as you know we have a pretty hard winter this year over here.
The lake below my house has been frozen solid for some three months and will likely be frozen at least two more months.
I was out skiing yesterday in -19c – not particularly cold for us and once you are moving you warm up and start enjoying the cold crisp, dry air. I’ve spent many a night out on the icefields in the Rockies and Selkirks in -40c temperatures. Always find amusing the articles on ‘arctic’ weather in the Star!
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although 1947 was a long cold snowy winter, one or 2 nights in 1981 got down to -18 which may have been colder than ’47. any one got any records of temps
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As a result of doing my family history Tony, I found I have many relatives in Canada, Victoria, BC actually. Had 3 g/great uncles, went on the Klondyke Gold Rush in 98 (Bonanza Creek, Yukon), one made a pile, bought his dad a farm over here near Wellington, the others joined the Canadian Army, 30th Forestry Battalion (Lumberjacks presumably).
I’ll grant you this Tony, Canada is a great place for young men and for anyone in your summers, but in winter, that’s something else, us old un’s would seize up. How the pensioners get on over there in midwinter gives me the willies to even think about it. One thing is certain, I shouldn’t think many pensioners do much skating over there.
One inch of snow over here and the whole country comes to a stop, one consolation though, we don’t see Polar Bears over here. If we did, we would know it was extra cold.
Devon, you get worse, I could just about stomach Kingsland Grange but Prestfelde, come on, were those the ones in little yellow and black peaked caps and the purple rinsed mothers with the elaborately carved poodle dogs. I think they were you know. We were the ruffians who used to go and take the mickey out of the German Prisoners of war in Belle Vue but nothing as thuggish as that for you – I bet you didn’t even go to the Kings Cinema Matinee on a Saturday morning for 3 pence (old) and then buy a stale bun for a halfpenny from the cake shop in St Julians. Prestfelde probably accounts for your way out politics but I’ll forgive you that seeing that the Labour Party is now in meltdown.
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Stuart, what fantastic memories – have you ever thought of documenting these?
It would make a lovely book. Certainly made me (40-ish) smile even though it was ‘before my time’. We used to walk the Cinder Path to get from Town to the Priory Girls school when I was younger so I know the geography!
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sorry stuart no my schooling did not shape my politics, but 45 years in a trade union had a bearing on my life, it taught me to look after others.
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Stuart… yes I remember the King’s on Saturday mornings .. lots of fun.. We called it the fleapit. I admit that I had a good friend who went to Prestfelde and another who attended Kingsland. I was from the slums … in Ditherington.
Somehow I prefer the winters here over the UKs
mainly because of the skiing, snowshoeing and skating. We ‘seniors’ get half rate at the ski hill for the downhill stuff and the cross-country is just a few minutes drive from my home. I still race a bit doing the annual 36k race at the local hill each year.
Life is pretty hard for many seniors, the pensions are much less than in Europe and of course the heating bills can be horrendous
Many rely on food banks and charity to survive.
I also remember the POWs .. though mostly Italian. I first learned German from a (former) German prisoner and eventually worked in Germany and Austria. I also remember having to work picking potatoes instead of school.. imagine that today!
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idon’tbelieveit, you certainly wouldn’t believe some of the stories that I could tell. It would more than fill one book. You know the little bridge over the bottom of the Cinder Path, that was the location of the first shy trysts of a lovesick young kid, he remembers her to this day. We both, still have a tender spot for each other. It was the scene of an amazing discovery when we found the brickwork under the bridge had been removed to form a “hidden store” for the chocolates and sweets that the Kingsland Grange school lads had bought from the Newsagents, we regularly raided it- taking care never to take it all. They found out, were waiting to ambush us on one occasion and beat the daylights out of us. On another occasion we dammed the brook up causing an almighty flood all over the fields – we were there when the Council unblocked it and a Tsunami a mile high went careering along the brook all the way to Coney Green where it met the river, legend had it that it almost washed a house away at the bottom of Luciefield Road, totally engulfed the weir down Castlefields and sank a few boats on it’s way down but I thought that was a bit of an exageration. The only real bit of villainy that one of our group got up to was when he ( a real studious loner) of the Priory Boy’s School fell out with his girlfriend from the Priory Girls School and broke into the Girls School for some devious reason. After they kissed and made up he told her that he did it, she told someone else and eventually the Police knocked on his door. Juvenile Court was the result with the “birch” as a punishment. He was comatose almost for a week, couldn’t walk for another week and we never saw him again, we were the kids getting him into “bad company”. He eventually ended up as “Sir …. ……, the Chairman of a gynormous shipping line. The only time I spoke to him after that was to politely ask if his rump was still tender. For some reason, he didn’t reply but looked at me with disdain or was it real contempt, anyway, it was the sneering look that only aristocrats can give, I didn’t ask again anyway.
The villains of old eventually made good, two ended up as Superintendents of Police, one a big shot in Local Government, one a member of the Overseas Civil Service travelling the world and the rest a miscellany of shop assistants, centre lathe turners, dustbinmen and one rose to the dizzy heights of a farm labourer in Church Stretton.
That’s all Editor, thank you, no more abuse, let’s get back to the snow.
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Tony, you brought the subject up, but the saga of potato picking for 3/9d (24p) per day and the weasel that ran up my trouser leg will have to wait for another time.
Did you go to Monkmoor ?
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