Summer of 1976

Caught by a redundancy we sold and moved to a village with our 14 month son. The house was opposite a very brown village green, the little stream running alongside it had dried up. No holiday for us that year, instead we created garden shade, got to know our kind and friendly new neighbours and just sort of sat it out. My Mum was very ill, Mr C’s brother died, It was a hugely stressful summer but we coped and found things to enjoy, some very good memories too.

We got married on 28 August and it rained! Couldn’t believe it. I wore a long sleeved Edwardian type dress with a floppy hat which I had to hang onto as the wind got up too. Our honeymoon was spent camping in the rain in fields and woods in Northumberland. We decided to come home early!

Yes I remember it. I was recently divorced and living in a ground floor maisonette with a garden that had a gate into the village playing field, great for my daughters who spent the whole summer hanging out with their friends, I could see them but they had some independence.
I was a keen gardener even then and Id save the bath water from the night before, drop a hosepipe into the bath and out through the window, give it a suck to start the flow and water the garden, not always successfully, often I'd have to resort to filling a watering can, cart it through the house and out to the garden.
I was young and fit then!

The best year! Used Johnson’s baby oil to get a tan. Eek

I remember it, parched grass everywhere, a glut of tomatoes and paddling pools out every day! My 2 boys were just 6 and just 3. Every day would mean them just in trunks or shorts and sandals, and being as brown as berries.

We had a fortnights caravan holiday in Devon and I think one of the only holidays I've had where the sun shone all day, every day. Happy days.

I was 18 and thought life was wonderful! I was pretty ( not being vain, I had long wavy hair and a figure I can only dream about now!) and had my pick of several handsome young men. Lots of good friends too. Was still living with parents and remember filling buckets and bottles from the standpipe down the road.

My Son was born February '76 so I remember it well. What a Summer!!
He wore just a nappy, (too hot for clothes), & spent the days in his pram, in the shade of my parents apple tree. Fabulous weather.

Yes I remember it well.
it was at a time when we knew where we stood. If someone swore (bad language) then they were considered to have been badly brought up. It irks me to hear so many younger, mainly Mummies using gutter language. I'm not a prude, this is what I witness and I don't like it.
Some parents are forgetting the children imitate their parents and will be judged harshly in school when the children copy parents.

Yes, I remember it very well and was living in P,ymouth at the time. My little girls were aged 4 and 5 years. We had our routine which was to drop the eldest off at school and the youngest and myself went every day we could to a free swimming pool nearby. It was idyllic and the skies were a beautiful blue with little white fluffy clouds - just as they are today. Often, either myself or a neighbour would collect the eldest from school while the other looked after the youngest and they would join us until it was time to take them home. I did all my housework and chores in the evenings while they were in bed and life was so much simpler in every way then. It was the happiest I’ve ever been!

I got married (for the first time) 28th August that year.

It was the first day of rain! We wanted the 21st, but MIL made us change it, as it clashed with some event or other Should have known it would rain, Bank Holiday weekend!

Went to a friends wedding a month before, and I almost fainted in the church because of the heat. (Catholic wedding, VERY long service)

Became really worried then that I would faint at my own!

I miscarried in the Summer of 1976,I remember a hospital nurse asking me where I had been on holiday.The back garden was my reply.

Our son was born in 1976 and we have photos of him lying on a rug under an apple tree and all of the lawn was all crisped up and yellow.
I remember when the heatwave started as I’d sent our daughter off to play school in a jumper and little kilt then come lunchtime I was scrabbling around trying to find shorts that still fitted.

I remember it well. I had an eighteen month old toddler and was pregnant with my second child. We lived in an inner city terraced house with a yard the size of a postage stamp. Phew it was hot!

Remember it well. I was 14. The heatwave started in May and went on till September. The only time I remember it raining was when we went on school camp to Charmouth in July. We had a couple of days when it rained then. A lovely carefree time, with some of the best 70's music ever.

I remember it very well - as I gave birth to my first beautiful daughter in October . We lived in Cornwall near the beach and I remember the summer going on forever - it was bliss. I remember the consultant remarking on my white stomach as nearly everything else was very brown. I had a bikini which I had put on some flowing material stitched all round it to cover my bump - I made two it was very pretty - not like today when girls show their beautiful bumps we didn’t dare too - well I didn’t anyway .

It was the year after I got married and we were living in a flat with no outdoor access. I remember my job meant I travelled around all day so I made sure I was somewhere reasonable at lunchtime so I could sit in the sun.

23rd June 1976 was my parents' silver wedding anniversary. They had arranged for relatives to stay with us and booked a meal at a nearby hotel. When we were shown to our table we found we were right in front of the open grilling area. It was so hot we ate as fast as we could and left!
Later we sat drinking and chatting in the garden until gone midnight. My DH and I got married in 1975 and I remember Mum saying that it was funny to think we would have OUR silver wedding anniversary before they had their golden. (Sadly they didn't live long enough to reach it.)
We would have stayed chatting all night by the light from the kitchen window, but my Dad needed the loo and went upstairs to the bathroom. He decided to change a light bulb on the landing, stuck his fingers in the socket and blew the main fuse. We were all plunged into darkness and my Dad got very little sympathy for his burnt fingers!

My husband's and a friend walked from a village just outside Cambridge to Ilfracome Devon along footpaths and byways, backpacking, leaving me at home with two cildren under 3. It took 2 weeks.No-one would give them water. He came back very suntanned and fit as a butcher's dog. I was shattered.

I was 15 and we moved from Staffordshire to the south coast. It was the school holidays and it was wonderful. I remember having an emerald green bikini?. Before we moved in the August I met my first true love in the spring,so it was heartbreaking to leave him behind. I remember him cycling to my house,a distance of about 20 miles,with a copy of You to Me are Everything which was our song. It was so hot it warped! When it rained in September we all rushed to the class room window! Happy memories?

I had a four year old and a two year old. It was a nightmare. Nobody could sleep. My Canadian neighbour said she had never thought a bikini would be everyday wear in England!

Daughter born 19.08.76. Spent the last few weeks sitting in the living room, curtains drawn and feet in a washing up bowl full of cold water!!

Our daughter was born in January 1976 in Germany. We had got used to very hot summers there. We came home to Ireland mid summer and everyone was complaining about the heat. To us it was normal!

My DD was 4 years old - I thought great, we can have her party in the garden, right? Wrong! It was so hot, it had to be indoors, there was a pile of party dresses on the couch and the children were running amok in the house!!

I remember it well. We lived in Perthshire, Scotland and I was expecting our daughter who was born in October. It was soon hot. I remember taking the car down to the river to wash it and a large salmon jumped and landed at my feet. I panicked and helped it back into the river......., and yes we didn't have much but life was good.

I remember it well as I gave birth to my first child in July of that year. I remember trying to find shade in the back yard and spraying cold water from the hose pipe to cool off