Winter watch 1963 .....The Big Freeze

I was 9 years old and I remember it very well. 5 children in a tiny house with no hot water and an outside lavatory that kept freezing up. The only source of heating was an open coal fire in one room so the rest of the house had ice on the inside of the windows that we breathed on to make little holes to see out of. We all had heavy coats and blankets piled on the beds to keep us warm at night but it was still bitterly cold at night. I remember that the milk bottles on the doorstep froze and the frozen milk popped up through the top like an ice lolly. We had to walk just over a mile through fields to school and the snow was in deep drifts against the walls. My brother jumped off a wall into a drift and disappeared!

I thought it meant end of 1963 and couldn't recall it but it was end of 1962 to mar 1963 then I remembered it well as I was still at home, burst and frozen pipes etc.

I watched it with horror. I was four and my brother was three months. I don't remember it all. It would be the year before I went to school so I'm assuming mum kept us inside. I must ask her.

I was at Primary school in Kent and remember it well.

The snow piled high on the edge of the road and lasting through to March. I can recall how happy my Mum was when it started to melt!

It started snowing on Boxing Day - the last of it disappeared the middle of March. It was a winter to end all winters in Somerset where no one was prepared, no one used to regular snow next to the sea and life sort of shut down for a long time. There were buses abandoned sideways on the main routes through the town, cars the same. The weight of the snow pushed down on all the trees and you couldn't see the garden wall in front of our house. We brought in our little rabbit, complete with hutch, from the garden to live in the kitchen corner.

When the farmers were persuaded to come in from the countryside to help the council workers shift the snow, they used their equipment to move snow onto the beach. Massive mounds of it sat there on the sand for months. The hospital was rammed with those being treated for broken limbs and it was difficult to walk even after lots of the pavements were supposed to have been cleared. At the end of it all, in March, the frozen snow long gone - we still picked our way over lumpy pavements covered in blue ice. We wore thick woolly fisherman socks over our boots or shoes in order to have some sort of traction and to be able to stay upright. We never bought a vegetable that hadn't been frozen in the ground and had to make knitted boots for the family dog to avoid his paws burning from all the ice and salt on the pathways. Happy Days!

I`d only been going out with my boyfriend for a few weeks. I was invited to tea at his home, but I waited in a near blizzard for over an hour and he didn`t show up. I`d lent him some records (remember those things?), so I got on a bus to his house, his mother answered the door, said "Was he supposed to meet you? He`s only just got up (3pm Sunday!) Just then he came to the door, all apologies, I said, huffily, "I`ve come for my records!" A few months later we got married, it lasted over 53 years, but it was flipping cold that afternoon in the snow!

I enjoyed the programme very much and it brought back lots of memories. But even better to read everyone’s stories on here which really tied in with my own. Also interesting information from Chris Packam. Sadly, hadn’t realised how badly the wildlife had been affected.

Hellogirl what a lovely story.

I remember walking down to the local park where there was a pond with massive carp to used to come to be fed. They were all dead and frozen in the ice and the gulls were walking about on the ice and eating them.

We had been married for nearly 3 years and our first baby was a couple of months old. At the time we were living in a bungalow in Essex, and had invited my parents to come and stay. To feed them I had made a huge casserole, but when they couldn't get to us, we fed the neighbour instead.

It snowed on Boxing Day '62 and stayed snowed until March. On the Wirral we were confined to the school hall at dinner time. I read Kidnapped for the first time, from the shelf in the classroom. It felt very grown up. The milk for morning break arrived with a good inch of frozen milk pushing the cap off. The bottles were put on the classroom radiator to thaw and by the time break came round it was warm and foul.

The snow started to fall on Christmas night. We’d been staying with friends in London so left early & drove home on Boxing Day to Sussex slipping & sliding through the lanes. The car didn't move for weeks. My Dad pulled my sledge to the local dairy & collected milk for us & all the neighbours. I didn’t return to boarding school until well into February as the pipes had frozen and burst so the school closed - hurrah. I seem to remember playing a lot of board games, reading my ‘Christmas’ books, playing records on my Dansette record player and writing in my new 5 year diary along the lines of “got up, had breakfast, played Ludo, had lunch, went to bed”?. No electronic devices in those days and only one channel on the telly

My mother spoke of the cold & snow starting on Boxing Day going all the way through to Easter.

I do wonder if snow will settle in central London this winter. So many office buildings have been empty or under occupied during the Autumn & daytime ambient temperatures have been relatively low, so that the overnight warming of the streets is far less. Maybe a white Christmas after all?

Darn it, should have gone to the bookies sooner.

I was 10 and remember being upset when watching bales of hay being dropped from aircraft for the Dartmoor ponies...hated the thought of them being cold and hungry...

I loved seeing that little rounded Robin Reliant trundling behind others in the snow!

My dad bought one about 1963. Made of fibreglass with sliding windows and a rock hard bench seat in the back for my sister and I to sit on. My, we were pleased as punch, warm and dry - all four of us off up to Oldham on our weekly trip to visit relatives. No more queuing for buses for this lucky family!
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I've just finished watching the programme, it's very good.
The strange thing - I can't remember any more about that winter after getting our darling firstborn home safe and sound.
He's getting on for 60 now - I'll have to give him a link to this.
Shows the adaptability of our animal race.

I was 5 at the time. I remember it being so cold. The snow piled up at the side of the road and my Grandmother waking up one morning saying Oh Jesus dont let it snow again today.
I have to admit I quite liked it. We had a coal fire and a paraffin heater which absolutly stunk.

I was just a toddler at the time so have no recollection of it myself, though I imagine my parents kept us all as snug and warm as possible. We had a lovely coal fire, so that must have helped. It must have been so difficult for my parents - for my dad getting to work and my mum trying to keep us fed.

There was/is a canal that runs along the edge of the village where I grew up. In 1963 after many weeks of frosts and snow the ice on the canal was so thick everyone was skating on it and pulling children on sledges on it.

I remember those paraffin heaters! We had a ‘Paul’ warmer. Every now and again flames would emerge and go higher than the mesh cover. I think my sister & I were a bit frightened of it when that would happen. We’d call out to mum and she’d jab the metal tube a couple of times with a knife handle ...
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I was at college and I don't remember it being shut. I trudged in and the snow was as high as the fences.

I was a newly-wed and living up 68 stairs in a hideous flat while our house was being built. The only heating was a coal fire in the sitting room, and carrying up coal and then water when the pipes in the road froze was more exercise than I wished for! We were undaunted by it all and kept on with our jobs whilst walking everywhere. DH was a young teacher at a boys’ public school, predominantly boarding, and keeping all that testosterone busy was hard work. After several weeks the army came to pump water from the river onto the low lying rugby pitches and safe skating was provided for the neighbourhood.

We have some little black and white photos of people in our lane queueing up at the stand pipe in the road, filling up buckets etc. I was 10, big sister 13, we were very proud as Dad was there with his little Ferguson tractor, filling up a huge container to take water to our small holding for all the animals.

Remember a girl in our class saying she had to use the water from her hot water bottle to get washed in. I thought “Ugh!”- would rather have remained unwashed.

I was at Grammar School in Durham. Many girls travelled in by private coaches if they lived more than 5 miles away, but I used the ordinary bus service as I lived 3 miles out. As the weather worsened - girls were sent home every day, by their addresses, until just the locals were left, by which time the service buses were off the road. There was a ‘fragile’ girl in my class and I was told to make sure she got home safely - I was 12 and had to walk a mile out of my way to get her to her front door. It wasn’t her fault, but I could have cheerfully murdered her at the time!

Loving these stories.