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An interesting article in a national newspaper the other week made me think I could add a few comments to it. The article was called “When snowflakes came from the sky” and was about the winter of 1946/1947, one of the harshest in recent English memory.
But the winter I remembered was the 1962/1963 winter. It was Boxing Day evening when heavy snow set in with a deepening low pressure from the Atlantic headed along the southern half of England colliding with high pressure centred on the northern part of Russia, creating a very cold easterly wind. The resulting snow storm dumped snow with three to four feet of snow drifts.
We were living in Rye’s King’s Avenue at the time and our back door faced east. The snow was so deep we couldn’t open it – and what made it worse, the snow blew across from the adjoining field causing a deeper drift.
The River Rother froze and I remember feeding two swans who found a broken part of the ice in which to swim.
I started work that January, trudging across The Salts playing field up to the High Street where I worked in the Home and Colonial grocery shop. There was no real heating at home, only a coal and log fire, with a paraffin heater in other rooms.
I remember drawing pictures on the inside of our bedroom window as the windows had frost on the inside.
Our milk was delivered when the milkman could get through the snow and ice but the milk in the bottles froze, pushing the silver foil top upwards. So we had to get the milk in quickly or the birds would open the milk up for you.
Before I started work and was still at school, only wearing short trousers and freezing in the playground, the best way to keep warm was to have snowball fights or make slides from the frozen ice.
Some of the slides were about 20 or 30 feet long and the snow and ice from the 1962/63 winter lasted all winter into the spring and the children of today would have had most of the winter off school. One snow flake today and schools are closed, buses and trains come to a halt and the country is in chaos.
Water pipes freeze and people complain they can’t have a shower or a wash for 12 to 24 hours. Let’s hope we don’t have a winter again like 1946/47 or 1962/63. God help us if we do.
[Editor-in-chief’s note: Showing my age I can remember both – 1947 was an opportunity to sledge on a tea tray in a local London park, which made a change from frequent central London hospital visits on plank walkways over and around bombed out buildings and piles of bricks.
The winter of 62/63 was worse because I had volunteered to be sports editor and there were no outdoor sports to report for nearly three months. But chess got reported very thoroughly. It was so cold, though, in East Anglia I thought I could see Moscow from the top of the church tower – or at least it felt like that.]
Photo: Rye News Library
Vic vicarey of Pottingfield road wrote the article above if more readers can add to the comments I would like to hear more of your stories about the winter of 1962 / 1963.
I remember the 1962/63 winter vividly. I was then living with my family in Surbiton. I was a member of the Molesey Rowing Club and training for the rowing season throughout the winter on the Thames. Because the river was frozen on the reach where we trained in our Eights we had to take our boats up by lorry to the London Rowing Club in Putney and did our training on the Tideway. We were often accompanied by the Cambridge University crew who were training for the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Needless to say it became very competitive!