Backwords: The Big Freeze
As cold weather clamps down on Britain today, and the weather forecasters predict snow, Mike Shaw recalls the big freeze of 1947.
By mid-January in 1947 everything in the garden was lovely. Then winter arrived with a vengeance.
By the time February came around we were well and truly gripped by the Big Freeze.
As the snow piled up and the thermometer plunged lower and lower, the buses stopped running and a lot of schools were virtually closed.
For those of us who were schoolchildren at the time it gave a heaven-sent opportunity to spend day after day sledging and snowballing instead of doing sums and spelling.
While that freezing February posed all sorts of problems for the grown-ups, the power cuts and massive drifts simply added to our boyish excitement.
By the time the snow was piled up to our windows, we were busy making the most of it by building igloos and forts, from whose battlements we waged fierce snowball fights.
Winter sports really came into their own in 1947, with skaters and ice-hockey players jostling for use of the ice on the deeply-frozen Square Dam near our home.
Some of the more adventurous even took to skiing, and I remember watching in awe as one of my brothers launched himself down a steep hill for the first run on his home-made skis.
His much-acclaimed debut proved a disaster when he went head over heels long before the finishing line. But he had no need to worry. There was to be plenty of time for him to perfect his technique.
All the winter sports were not confined to the daylight hours, either. The evening skies were so clear and bright that lots of youngsters even forsook their nightly episode of radio’s Dick Barton for sledging under the stars.
Just when it seemed that a thaw might be on the way, we were hit by another wave of blizzards that made the drifts more mountainous than ever.
Tunnels through the snow began to appear all over the place, and I remember one in particular at the White House, Holthead, where there was a notice at the mouth of it saying “Pedestrians, one penny, sledgers tuppence.’’
Our family was blest with a huge outside coal-house, so we were well-stocked with fuel for the winter. Even so, I do remember dragging my hurry-cart for a mile up Manchester Road to Marsden gasworks for a bag of coke to eke out our supplies.
Other folk were not so lucky, and there were all sorts of tales told about how people were managing to keep warm.
One family who lived near us used to take it in turns to sit in front of their lighted gas oven, and some even resorted to burning bits of furniture.
February came and went and the snow just wouldn’t stay away. There were more blizzards in March and when the thaw did eventually start there were the inevitable floods.
Our cellar was notoriously prone to flooding from an underground spring. This time the water rose to record levels, so winter sports gave way to water sports for me in my Wellingtons.
I spent hours sailing all the model boats I could lay my hands on. Until the water crept up to perilous depths and my mother put the cellar out of bounds to me and my brothers until the flooding had subsided.
So the harshest winter of my life drew to a close - or so we thought. Even then the snow refused to stop and there were even more falls during the Easter holiday in early April.
So today, when we look out on the flowering crocuses, I reckon we should keep our fingers crossed and avoid walking under any ladders.
And, above all, pray that the non-winter doesn’t suddenly turn into another Arctic adventure like 1947. Unless, of course, you happen to be young enough to enjoy it.
