MEMOREYS OF THE 1963 WINTER

[jimtheworzel]

1963   Due to a MAJOR gas leak in our rd we where told we han to move out
so we loaded the 4 month old son and 2 year old daughter into the pram and walked the 4 miles to the mum in laws,,,,,,,HAPPY DAYS

[jimtheworzel]

[Aden Roller]

1963? I was ten. Was it a particularly bad winter? I can't remember.  ::)

I can recall one winter a few years later when the beach froze and my mate and I were trapped in a red phone box until a blizzard blew over and we could make it to my place. School had closed early and we were all sent home at lunch-time. He lived miles away so took refuge at my place until his parents could get through to collect him.

[saddad]

I was 18 months old.... I know it was the reason my mum insisted my dad move nearer to town... a mile and a half is a very long way when the snow is more than waist deep!  :-X

[ACE]

I was home on xmas leave from the navy, I was due back on board new years day 1963. Got a telegram saying do not attemp to get travel back until the snow has gone. We had a snowman in the garden so I did not try to get back until he had melted completely away. That ended up sometime in the middle of march. I was only a ferry ride away and I saw my posting sailing away from our front room. If it had been going somewhere hot I might have been tempted but she was sailing off for a 3 month stint of artic patrol. Got a bit of a rollicking when I reported back for duty, just in time for a trip to the carribean, for 6 months.

[Digeroo]

I remember 1963 very well.  We were staying with my grandmother and on Christmas eve it snowed, so on Boxing day we dug out the drive to the road, since she lived in a cottage on a farm it was quite a long way.  My mother decided she was too tired to drive how so said she would leave in the morning.  Overnight it snowed again and this time it was really deep.  Our previous efforts were totally covered.

Enjoyed ice hockey on the pond and building a huge igloo. 

Once back home we built an awesome tobaggan run on the recreation ground.  After a few days one of the local residents came out and put a huge bag of salt on it.  We had to dig it all out and replace it.  Somehow an enormous pile of snow ended up right outside his out.  Interestingly it was not the children who dumped it there.  It arrived on a tracked vehicle. 

My mother had a dust up with the headmistress of my school about trying to insist we continued to wear short white ankle socks.  We ended up with long green socks instead, with thick tights underneath.  It looked hideous.

[lorna]

Oh Yes I remember it well!! We bought our first shop (greengrocers) and believe it or not I got frost bite in one hand. The old dears (bless 'em) used to say "Are the cabbages frozen?). We found pieces of bricks in the bottom of sacks of cabbage where some dodgy people had put them in to make up the weight. Didn't make any profit from green veg that winter.

[lincsyokel2]

Ah yes , the winter of '63, i remember it well, i was nine years old.

I remember the frost on the inside of the bedroom window (no central heating in them days) being so thick and hard I couldn't scrape it off with my finger. You learned to get dressed in bed in those days, under a ton of sheets, blankets, woolly knitted covers and your overcoat on top.

I was amazed at the icicles hanging from the soffit boards, huge long things we broke off and were fascinated by. I remember seeing blizzards on TV, and it saying how people in remote cottages in Yorkshire were freezing to death, and images of farmers digging flock's of sheep out of huge piles of snow, all dead.

I had gotten a Meccano for xmas, and a Jetex engine - this was a little jet engine you put a solid round tablet in, and you were supposed to mount it on a balsa wood glider. Because everything was frozen up, I made a thing out of meccano with wire skis and mounted the jetex of that, it rocketed along across the frozen pond, and provided us with much amusement.

We had power cuts, as the snow brought the grid lines down, six inches thick in ice. I remember sitting by candle light eating my tea that had been warmed up on a camping stove. We didn't mind, because it was an adventure, such things were because the world was a simpler place in those days. Nobody bitched or sued for compensation, we just got on with it.

It was so cold, some days it had frost all day and then all night (in fact the temperature never rose above freezing for 42 consecutive days). I remember seeing ice floes forming and drifting down the River Witham in Lincoln city centre. Where we lived we biked down to the river and it was frozen from bank to bank as far as you could see, but we didn't dare walk far on it into the middle, non of us could swim.

I remember the bursts of freezing fog at night, a bitter cold that swirled round you in the moonlight,  reflecting and shimmering of the ice particles, imparted with a surreal blue hue from the moons reflected sunlight.

We ran out of coal. The (what seemed to me) huge bottomless coal bunker we fed the coal fires in the house on emptied, my dad had to find a small truck and fetch some from the coal merchants. I never saw the back of the coal bunker again for another 40 years years, until my mother moved out the house after my dad died.

Although there has been some snowy, cold winters, in particular 1980-81, none have lasted as long as that of 1962-63, the longest sustained cold spell since the 1600's.  The winter of '47 was colder, but not as long.

[gwynnethmary]

We had our school uniform changed too.  I had just started at the grammar school, and at first it was short white socks, which graduated to grey knee socks, then bliss!  We got to wear thick stockings!  Our joy was short-lived because we still had draughts, and boys flicking our suspenders (well one boy, until I spragged and told our young, very embarrassed form teacher!).  Fortunately, the stockings were very quickly replaced by tights, thick grey/black, ad I can still remember how good they felt!
Our school was almost on the sea front, and it's quite unusual for snow to lay around there, but it did that winter, and I recall many a snowball fight and those horrible boys pushing them down our necks! Happy days!

[Aden Roller]

Ah yes , the winter of '63, i remember it well, i was nine years old.

I remember the frost on the inside of the bedroom window (no central heating in them days) being so thick and hard I couldn't scrape it off with my finger. You learned to get dressed in bed in those days, under a ton of sheets, blankets, woolly knitted covers and your overcoat on top.

I was amazed at the icicles hanging from the soffit boards, huge long things we broke off and were fascinated by. I remember seeing blizzards on TV, and it saying how people in remote cottages in Yorkshire were freezing to death, and images of farmers digging flock's of sheep out of huge piles of snow, all dead.

I had gotten a Meccano for xmas, and a Jetex engine - this was a little jet engine you put a solid round tablet in, and you were supposed to mount it on a balsa wood glider. Because everything was frozen up, I made a thing out of meccano with wire skis and mounted the jetex of that, it rocketed along across the frozen pond, and provided us with much amusement.

We had power cuts, as the snow brought the grid lines down, six inches thick in ice. I remember sitting by candle light eating my tea that had been warmed up on a camping stove. We didn't mind, because it was an adventure, such things were because the world was a simpler place in those days. Nobody bitched or sued for compensation, we just got on with it.

It was so cold, some days it had frost all day and then all night (in fact the temperature never rose above freezing for 42 consecutive days). I remember seeing ice floes forming and drifting down the River Witham in Lincoln city centre. Where we lived we biked down to the river and it was frozen from bank to bank as far as you could see, but we didn't dare walk far on it into the middle, non of us could swim.

I remember the bursts of freezing fog at night, a bitter cold that swirled round you in the moonlight,  reflecting and shimmering of the ice particles, imparted with a surreal blue hue from the moons reflected sunlight.

We ran out of coal. The (what seemed to me) huge bottomless coal bunker we fed the coal fires in the house on emptied, my dad had to find a small truck and fetch some from the coal merchants. I never saw the back of the coal bunker again for another 40 years years, until my mother moved out the house after my dad died.

Although there has been some snowy, cold winters, in particular 1980-81, none have lasted as long as that of 1962-63, the longest sustained cold spell since the 1600's.  The winter of '47 was colder, but not as long.

You had some fancy Christmas presents!! No orange or chocolate money wrapped in gold coloured paper and a new pair of socks for you then? (Mind you one year I did get a second hand pair of football boots!!)

We had a coal fire in the sitting room and a donkey stove in the kitchen but.... out back in the conservatory that may father built we had a cream coloured boiler and a switch. Half an hour after the coke was piled in and the fire lit you flicked the switch and the radiators came on around the house. Hot baths and luxury... even if it was only lit on bath days and the coldest of other days. Upstairs in my room the radiator warmed well even without the switch being flicked.  :)

Of 1963 I only remember the sea freezing along the beach and the odd bit of a chill. It was the boiling hot summer sun I hated... we seemed to have a few scorchers back then.

[lincsyokel2]

Of 1963 I only remember the sea freezing along the beach and the odd bit of a chill. It was the boiling hot summer sun I hated... we seemed to have a few scorchers back then.

Ah yes the summers of the 60's

The two endearing memories i have of 60's summers were the tarmac melting an bubbling on the road outside the house, and white dog poo. You never seen white dog poo these days, i have no idea why. When i was 9 years old i never suspected one day i woudl be nostalgic for it......    :-X


Lets not get onto the 70's, we'll be here all night.

[ACE]

The  doggie doos of old must have been the result of their diet. Houshold scraps and a bone from the butchers mostly. Nowadays the tinned pet food and bags of dried kibble have changed  all that.
Our hound gets the bone out of the joint and sometimes as a treat what is jokingly known as a 'postmans leg' from the pet shop which is a huge part baked bone.He will gnaw it for days keeping his toothie pegs in good condition and the resulting white stuff comes out of the other end 


When I had my knee replaced, I asked if I could have the old one back for the dog, he would have enjoyed that ;D

[Digeroo]

I asked if I could have the old one back for the dog

Are you saying they would not give you your bone back?    Might also be good for fertilizer.  Perhaps they sell it for BFB. 

Was the ozone layer thin in the 1960s I got some terrible sun burn?

[Melbourne12]

My most abiding memory of that winter is one morning after a particularly heavy snowfall, helping my dad to get to work.  The family lived in Purley, in Surrey, at that time, which is quite hilly.  It was a matter of pride to my dad that he'd get to work every day, in spite of the weather.  Work was in Walton on Thames.

But that morning it wasn't just a matter of clearing the drive, and guiding the car down 30 yards or so of steep hill onto a flatter piece of road.  The snow was just too deep.  So my brother (who was only 8 years old) and I (14) piled into the car with shovels, pieces of old carpet, and a bucket of sand and kept him moving until he could get onto a road that had been ploughed or salted.

It turned out that we had to go all the way to Banstead before findng clear tarmac, a distance of just over 4 miles (I just checked it on Google maps).  My brother and I then set off home, armed with one of the shovels to clear the drive in anticipation of dad's return later.

The walk home was truly fascinating, and we had an enjoyable time helping other motorists who had slid into the side of the road.  The most amusing was when we came across a hearse (fortunately empty) driven by two undertakers who looked to my youthful eyes to be about a hundred years old.  They were stuck on a hill.  The slightly younger of the ancient retainers was ineffectively pushing the back of the hearse while the wheels spun in the snow.

So we dug some of the snow away in front of the hearse, and my brother and I joined the old boy at the back and gave it a bit of a heave-ho.  Yes!!!  It moved, then the tyres found some grip, and gathered speed as all three of us broke into a trot as we continued to push.  The driver certainly wasn't going to stop until he reached the top of the hill, and sped away.  We were all three still pushing as hard as we could.  Of course it was easy for us two boys to regain our footing, but the elderly undertaker suddenly found himself pushing at thin air and fell full length into the snow.

Poor chap.  Stifling our laughter we helped him up, dusted him down, and he limped up the hill to rejoin his colleague who had paused at the top.  We imagined the subsequent conversation between the two top-hatted gents would have been most undignified.

[Digeroo]

As you lived in Purley do you remember the smogs the year before. 

[Trevor_D]

I was at college, in the back of beyond in the Bucks countryside. We were in wooden huts - originally built as accommodation for the code-breakers at Bletchley Park - and one by one the heating, lighting and water all went off. We dressed in wooly jumpers to go to bed, and piled the rest of our clothing on the top! They refused to send us home, because they would have to pay our fares, and we had a large contingent from Newcastle!

And then we had a teaching practice in Slough. The coach couldn't get up the country lanes to the college, so we had to walk the two miles to the village. We shaved and cleaned our teeth when we got to our schools! Then back to college in the afternoon; a round trip of just over twelve hours! Carrying piles of books to mark, of course, plus stuff to prepare lessons for the next day!

That's why I can't stand fools drooling about having a White Christmas!!!

[artichoke]

In 1963 I was a 20 yr old student in London, but I had to get there from Fife in Scotland. It took a friend's landrover to get me to Edinburgh for the overnight coach, and the coach took about 14 hours to get to London.

I was in lodgings with a lot of other students, and the landlady wouldn't allow any heating until mid-day, so basically we stayed in bed with hot water bottles and our books until then.

At my college, women were forbidden to wear trousers, if you can believe it, and there was a "Lady Supervisor" with an office under the stairs where she could see everyone who disobeyed and call them back. I did wear trousers all that winter, but was adept at sneaking in when she was out or looking the other way.

Smog was mentioned, and I experienced around that student time what I think was the last London smog. You had to wrap your face and hair up in a scarf to keep out the sticky black dirt, and even crossing a wide road was a bit frightening - impossible to see traffic, or the other side of the road, with a tendency to get disoriented around the middle.

[GRACELAND]

sorry not around till 1964   ??? ???

[Melbourne12]

As you lived in Purley do you remember the smogs the year before. 

I do indeed!  My young sister and I went to schools in Croydon, and I would pick her up from school and travel home on the bus with her.  I remember one of the smogs when the bus stopped short, and we had to walk the rest of the way home through this rather eerie pea-souper.

[lincsyokel2]

sorry not around till 1964   ??? ???

Nothing here for the children, move along please :P

[lincsyokel2]

As you lived in Purley do you remember the smogs the year before.  

I do indeed!  My young sister and I went to schools in Croydon, and I would pick her up from school and travel home on the bus with her.  I remember one of the smogs when the bus stopped short, and we had to walk the rest of the way home through this rather eerie pea-souper.

Bang in the centre of Lincoln is a large area of water known as the Brayford Pool, its mainly a marina now, hundreds of boAts moored there, and a large swan population. Its the confluence of River Witham and the Fosse d**e Canal. AS such, in winter we get thick fogs across town intiated by such a large body of water. There used to be a magnificent early Victorian Iron bridge across the Brayford  with a half timbered 17th century pub at one end, which was sadly removed in the 70's, but i remember crossing this bridge many times  on dark cold foggy winter nights. It was so Charles Dickens!!