Remember the heatwave of 1976?

I qualified as a primary teacher in 1976. I remember our leaving do in the hot weather. I suppose it would be called a prom nowadays!?
We enjoyed our first narrow boat holiday on the Shropshire Union Canal (chemical toilet and no shower!?). We’ve been on many canals since then.

I worked in a hotel on an island for the entire summer and when I returned the customs officer was suspicious because I was still lily white. I started at 7.30 in the morning and worked through until gone 8 at night. As it was a family concern, we were expected to work for 7 days a week.

I was 19 and working in the quality control lab of a synthetic rubber factory on the shore of the Solent. The lab was full of small ovens for baking the latex, and it had a wall of South facing windows. Yes it was quite as bad as you'd imagine.

Being on the coast meant that weekends could be spent on the beach, which was lovely. I also played on a cricket match for the first and last time in my life - out for a duck, every ball I bowled hit for four, and I got a groin strain....

ginny

We got married on the 3 rd July 1976.
Bridal fashion then was long sleeves and high necks. Luckily my dress was fairly light fabric.
I can remember everyone using the order of service as fans.
We saved a fortune on drinks as every wanted long cold squash.

We married 9 October 76 and it was dull and drizzling all day!!! Photos were junk! We all looked miserable and wet! And we only had 2 wet days in lakes away as we'd only got keys to new build flat (we'd bought) on the day before!!! The heatwave was a great time! I was only 20 and sunbathed whenever I could and had the most amazing tan with Johnson's baby oil!

O level summer, was at a strict all girls' grammar school. We 5th and Upper Sixth formers were allowed to take our study periods in the wooded areas around the games field. Absolutely unheard of! We normally had to sign in and out of the library which had floor to ceiling windows (without blinds) on two sides! ?

It was my DD1s 4th birthday - I thought 'great!' can have a party outside, right? Wrong! It was so hot the children were all indoors running around the settee which was piled with party dresses!

I had a baby on 10th June 1976. In the heat leading up to that my blood pressure began to rise and I was asked to go into hospital a couple of days before that. For the first six weeks of my daughter's life she lived in a terry towelling nappy and cotton sleeveless wrap-around vest and lay in her pram in the shade in the garden. I breast fed her without the presence of a fan to cool either of us down, and we took baths in tepid water. We were both absolutely fine - no drama, no scaremongering in the met office reporting.

I remember how warm it was and playing out later with my friends. I remember going on a school trip and seeing the tops of the buildings of a village sunken to become a reservoir. I remember the coolness of the blue John mines and the blinding light and overwhelming heat when leaving the mine. I also remember how long my legs used to be I wore a pair of really short shorts and when I saw my legs I wondered why I wasn't taller. Also I remember a cheesecloth top that tied across my midriff. I was only 9 and had never had a top like it. I wore it to death. Walks and picnics with friends. Happy Days.

It was my parents Silver Wedding Anniversary in June 1976. They had booked for family and relations to have a meal at a restaurant that grilled steaks etc in the eating area and it was so unbearably hot and stuffy that we all got out as quickly as we could. No-one stayed for dessert!
We all went back and sat chatting and drinking in the garden until after midnight because it was too warm to go indoors. My husband and I had been married almost one year and I remember my Mum saying that it seemed funny to think that we would celebrate our Silver Wedding anniversary before she and my Dad would celebrate their Golden Wedding anniversary. Sadly, they never made it that far.

I missed it all - we were living in Germany at the time. I heard all about it though from letters from home (those were the days), and the German papers were full of it, so it must have been quite something.

I remember feeling I was missing out at the time, but I’ve never been good in hot weather, so it was probably just as well.

My youngest brother was born end of aug in 76 and I started comp school so I remember it well I was 11 lol

I lived in a bedsit in Shepherds Bush. It was tiny and I had to sleep with window wide open (luckily on 2nd floor so nobody came in!) I worked in an office directly opposite Hammersmith Fire Station and every half hour or so the bells would start up and out would come the engine(s).

Working in a local HMRC office in Romford ( when they did face to face customer service) no air con and windows that only opened an inch and doing up a nearly derelict house evenings and weekends but I was young and invincible...

I remember it well. Lugging used bath water in buckets to water the garden. Officially it lasted 15 days but the heat went from June to August. I remember sitting in the office with our feet in waste paper bins of cold water and the boss buying ice lollies for everyone.

My daughter was also born in 1976. So hot, but I remember we just had to get on with it. Glad she was my first.

I was with my brother and his family at the Music Summer School at Dartington Hall in Devon. I was a listener, not a musician.
I can remember you were only allowed 3 inches of bath water and my sister in law and I saved hours and carried it out to the trees in plastic bags. One of the gardeners asked us what we were doing and laughed when we told him we were trying to save the lovely trees from the drought.

saved ours

My first child was born in March, just before the heatwave. We moved house in April, the heat started the next day - think it was April 11th.
It was a nightmare time to have a small baby!

I really don’t remember the heat. I had DS in March, but those were the days when it was never too hot for me.

Remember it VERY well! I was in the Fire Service at the time and it's the hardest I've ever worked! I lost 2 stones in weight over 3 months, and it was no picnic for my wife either as she was heavily pregnant with our first child!
On the bright side we did get to see Lynyrd Skynyrd at Knebworth!

We moved to a midlands City and away from the sea. The climate was stifling for days on end. There was a plague of ladybirds you were literally crushing them as you walked and they got up your nose.
I came in one day to see an army of ants marching under my back door into the kitchen and into the sugar!!!! I had to get Rent A kill and they advised me to decant all perishable cupboard things into plastic boxes with lids.
All I wanted was to go back and paddle in the sea.

I had just done my O Levels and spent 2 weeks of the summer holidays on a school trip in Guernsey - it was beautiful! We were camping in the grounds of what I seem to remember was either a nunnery or a girls school in St Martins. We had a glass of water to do our teeth with and had to wash in the sea. I just remember special beaches, one particular one on Herm where you could stand on the water's edge and dive in .... in those days I didn't have so much trouble with the heat as I do now, but with red hair and fair skin I always had to be careful. The other thing I remember was the night sky - there were no street lams so the skies were black and just covered with stars, first shooting stars I had ever seen - Elton John and Kiki Dee were number one and David Dundas and Jeans On was in the charts .... I can still picture a lot of the places we went to and remember names of the beaches and a gorgeous hotel we had to pass to get to Moulin Huet Beach, the closest one to where we stayed ....

I worked as an analytical chemist at what was then North West Water Authority. I remember all the lab staff went outside at lunchtime and played rounders and cricket. We used a piece of wood for a bat. I've no idea where the ball came from. We weren't scared to spend time outside! My mother had hay fever for the first time. Her face swelled up!

I had been in Valencia for 3 months from the Easter and when I came home in the July I thought it might be cooler…..no texts in those days! But it was just as hot so had my shoulder length curly hair cut short like a boy’s!

Yes, I remember the heatwave of 1976. It was 35 degrees in the shade at the beginning of June in Copenhagen, and then I went off to Spain to take a three week course in advanced flamenco dance.

Three classes a day of nearly two hours each, starting at 8 a.m. til 1.pm break for lunch and siesta the back for the last class at 4 p.m. After that two or three hours practising on our own, for our teachers were used to the heat and made absolutely no allowances at all for it being hotter than usual.

I also remember the heat wave in, I think, 1960 - my mother said it was the first time she had ever needed to water the garden, living as we did in th west of Scotland.

We had some glorious hot and dry summers in the 1980s too, 1983 probably and '89, or '90, where we laid my friend's three month old baby daughter on a pile of towels on the floor with nothing on at all, as she had the most horrendous nappy rash. We had about six feeding bottles with boiled water cooling in the fridge at a time for Antonia and gave her one as soon as the previous one was empty.

Rinsed the wetted towels, scalded them and hung them out - they were dry in five minutes and back on duty.