Winter of 63

Does anyone else remember the winter of 1963? I was 3 years old & strangely, I do remember being on a local beach with my father. I am told we had walked there, but I only remember the beach /sea. Not the whole exsperience.

2 Likes

Yes, I’d just started primary school and remember the snow piled up three times as tall as me on the side of the pavements

2 Likes

I sure do. I was 19 coming up for 20 when the 1962 big freeze first started. Trying to get to uni was very difficult. I can remember most electric trains were removed in favour of steam power. Even the diesel in some trains froze solid or so thick the fuel would not pump. The deep freeze kept up for months!

3 Likes

Yes I remember it. I was 9. Loads of snow, windows iced on the inside. Was freezing indoors no central heating then.
We were only allowed to wear short trousers as part of school uniform then. Surprised I managed to father 2 children (that I know of :joy: joking)

5 Likes

Yes. I was eight years old and still had to go to school. It didn’t shut like it would now under similar conditions. All the teachers made it too. Snow about waist high on the lanes around where I lived, snow drifts even deeper. We (sister, brother, and I) made an igloo in the garden by rolling up the snow into giant snowballs - surprising how heavy they were - and piled them up to make our makeshift igloo. Mittens, socks and shoes piss wet through by the end of the day, then in for tea, a bit of a warm, dry pyjamas and chilblains. :slight_smile:

Happy days.

4 Likes

I was snug in my cot … and only got anxious when my elder brothers and sister wanted a snowman for the garden.

4 Likes

Yes, I was a youngster.

3 Likes

I remember it well.We lived on a farm on the high ground about six miles from Kirriemuir. The road down to our farm was blocked but we had a snowplough - needed a few goes at it. Many of the sheep were blanketed in deep snow and my dad and I had to dig them out.

Eventually, the snow cleared but it wasn’t until we had seen the last of it in early April.

1 Like

I remember it, I was 12 at the time
I remember frost on the inside of my bedroom window in the morning; the smell of the paraffin heater in the kitchen; travelling to school in an unheated double decker bus with the open platform at the back and no doors

My Dad was a builder, and he had a Ford Squire, which as the estate version of the Ford Popular, I think
Heaters were considered an expensive and unnecessary luxury, so when we went to the local town we all got dressed up in extra clothes and Mum made me wear a hot water bottle on a string round my neck; we were just as cold at the end of an 11 mile journey as we were at the start
Even at the age of 12 or 13 I couldn’t understand why anyone would make a car without a heater for Britain
No wonder Japanese cars made a killing when they began to be imported a couple of years later, they had heaters & radios as standard

However i was just a bit too young to understand the more serious problems of transport, food supply, and so on

1 Like

Yes, I remember it well. I was 12 at the time, and my friends and I had such fun at the local playing fields - the field dropped away to a lower level, about 2.5 feet difference in height. With all the drifting snow it wasn’t possible to see where the level dropped, so we delighted in ploughing through the 2’ deep snow until we suddenly dropped into snow almost out of our depth. It was hilarious.
I remember frozen pipes, and our mum telling us we had to use the water from our hot water bottles to wash with in the mornings. I remember trying to pick off the beautiful ice crystal patterns on the inside of my bedroom window, until my dad told me off because it could crack the glass! Funnily enough, I don’t particularly remember the cold, but of course it must have been. And it must have been so awful for people trying to get to work, or to the shops, for the elderly or disabled who struggled to cope. But at 12 years old, I saw only fun.

1 Like

I remember going under a sledge when it tipped over after I was sat between the legs of my elder brother.
I was coming up to 6 at the time .

1 Like

I was 12 at the time and had to walk a couple of miles to school in those days. There were some amazing slides in the playground until the teacher came out and salted it. I think a couple of children suffered some bad falls. Most people still turned up for work, because just about all the blokes worked down the pit at the other side of the village. Outside toilet had frozen up, so it was buckets at the ready. I’ve never tasted toast so good as it was on the open fire, and the telly closed down at ten so it was off to bed in sub zero temperatures. Don’t think being an only child was a bunch of roses when you never had siblings to snuggle up to…

1 Like

I remember it very distinctly it was my last year at school, I had to walk 4 miles .to my grammar school in the freezing cold and knee deep snow (and above) Pipes froze, my old man had a kero heater under the car to stop it freezing, there was also a heater in the pit in the front garden where the water came into the house is a vain attempt to stop that freezing up.

School was steamy and smelly with everybody’s socks on the radiators drying out, wellies in piles and everybody wearing plimsolls.

Trains to London couldn’t operate because of ice on the third rail.

The Tonight program with Cliff Michelmore suggested it could be the start of a new ice age (how wrong was that?)

It was a cold miserable winter in buildings totally unsuited to the climate.

Many local fishing pools and lakes were frozen over for weeks on end. When they finally thawed the number of dead and dying fish were a sight to take in. Even one tiny pool, no more than 25yards diameter and very shallow, near where we lived had fish in it that were not known about - like pike to about 10lbs. Who’d have thought such a small pool could sustain such a large predator as that?

2 Likes

I was 6, I remember walking to primary school with my elder sister, the snow coming in over the top of my wellies, big drifts in some places that we clambered over. It seemed great fun and very exciting.

1 Like

Yes I remember that those years. It started in December 1962 & carried on til March 1963.
It was when I had my horse Torry, she & her pal Tansy were out in the field when we went to see them early in the morning, they had icicles hanging from their manes & tails & even though they were well rugged up they were shivering. We hastily cleared a stable for them & got them both in it together. Rubbed them down & re-rugged them with more blankets underneath & fed them a warm meal. The ground was rock hard, water pipes frozen, lots of water boiled on the stove to defrost the water. It was a nightmare.I was 20 at that time.
I don’t remember much snow where we were though.

1 Like