How cold was the winter in 1963?

[cuddlycat]

They're all saying this winter will be the coldest since 1963, but how cold was the winter of 63? I wasn't around, I don't know!

[shaneystar]

Very cold. I lived in Kent then and the snow was piled up the sides of the roads for ages .I seem to remember it went on from about January until March and we had to trudge to school in it !

[shaneystar]

Good link here from the good old BBC website which will tell you all about it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/weather/big_freeze_youremail s.shtml

[andy hughes]

I was nine in 1963, and my abiding memory is that once the snow fell, it stayed on the ground for weeks, usually piled up by the roadside by snowploughs, it just turned gray and stayed there for ages.

I remember us sledging down our road, which was about a 1:6 gradient, and we had an old-style wooden sledge with metal runners, which travelled like the proverbial excrement off an excavator! Of course, these days there'd be some council ordinance to stop us, but then we just used to cannon into the wooden gate of the electricity sub-station, and rush up the hill to do it again!

[shaneystar]

Only a youngster then Andy !! I was 15 and we had some really steep roads in Chatham. My poor Mum slipped in the ice coming down one of the roads and dislocated her shoulder.My dad worked in the dockyard and they had ice breakers on the Medway.This freezing weather didn't prevent our sadistic games teacher making us play hockey in it !
Also we had no central heating and an outside loo !!

[burnhal]

was a mere youngster of 8 then and lived in Yorkshiree. Dad was a prison officer so we lived on a prison estate and had to walk half a mile to the bustop to school. The cons were put to work digging the paths through the snow. We walked the whole half mile to the bustop with snow piled up highabove our heads the whole way. Was a bit like a bob sleigh track! Seemed to last forever but I cant actually remember it going. Reminds me of the leaky tap on the school playground. Used to give a massive sheet of solid ice over a lot of the playground in the winter- wonderful slides!! Wouldnt allow that these days! Where's the salt!!

[vehelpfulguy]

One thing that highlights how bad it was is that it went below freezing around Xmas when it snowed AND DID NOT GO ABOVE FREEZING AGAIN TILL MARCH.

All the snow that fell just stayed there, when it snowed again that went on top of what was there and it all just stayed there. None of it thawed.

There were still some canal boats carrying goods around the country in those days, but all the boats got frozen in the canals for weeks, and most of the canal boat companies went out of business.

But the thing that highlights how bad it was is that anyone who lived through it remembers it.

Ask someone what the winter was like in 1987 or 1996 for example, and they have no idea, but mention 1963 and they all remember.

[derekpara]

I remember seeing a car on the frozen surface of the River Thames near Hampton Court and then going on to walk the length of Virginia Water ( with dozens of others) near Egham in Surrey.

Yes, it was bad, but by golly it taught me how to drive in those conditions !

[Robinia]

I was 9 but to be honest I don't remember any particular year (sorry vehelpfulguy!). All winters were cold &, I'm sure, often snowy & icy. My mum wrapped us in so many layers that we couldn't bend our arms or at the waist (don't mention liberty bodices!) & then we'd get undressed & put nearly as many clothes back on to go to bed. No central heating & the windows had ice on them in the mornings!!

[woofgang]

I was 10, lived in London, the weather was amazing, they closed our school at first because of it...also living with no central heating and outside loo, my dad put a paraffin heater in there and kept it burning 24/7 to stop the loo freezing. Our heating was open fires and none at all in the bedrooms which had ice on the insides of the window in the morning. My Dad used to get up first every morning to light the kitchen fire so we'd come down to a warm room, we didn't light the living room fire till the afternoon. You had to make sure to get the milk in quick, otherwise it froze and either pushed the top off or smashed the bottle....sounds like Charles Dickens doesn't it? We were working class and not well off but not nearly so badly off as some, we could afford warm clothes and plenty of coal, there were children in my class at school who came to school in summer clothes and no coats or socks. they used to get given things through the church, sometimes you'd see one of them wearing something that had belonged to one of my older sisters but I "knew" (how do kids know these things?) not to say anything.

[dilligaf]

What a wonderful question ito find out how old the subscribers to this site are!

[Pythia]

Just wandered into this part of the site, don't usually come here ... lovely to hear everyone's stories ... I too was in primary school, walking to school through snowdrifts way higher than I was, and here in south Wales it was so cold that the sea froze

[cuddlycat]

I'm horrified!

I'm actually from Brazil and have been living in England -Yorkshire - for a few years and hadn't even seen snow at all until I came here and even though I have seen snow a few times now, not to the epic proportions you nice people have been describing!
My mum was planning on coming over for Xmas, I think she might want to think again!!!!

Thank you all for your answers, however frightening they might be... (below freezing until March?!?! Seriously?!)

[james23]

In 1963 I was 19. I worked for the Birmingham Council, in what was then the Water Department. We had hundreds of phone calls for help, as the water pipes to property had frozen up underground, it was so cold. Many people were without a water supply for days, until the pipes could be thawed out..and then they often burst and froze! We coped. Would we today? We'd probably blame it all on global warming!