Winter 1962-63 in Notts

[Compo 10,328]

What a winter! I remember the first night of snow: Flakes as big as (old) pennies falling gently from a black, silent sky; shining my Christmas present torch up through the falling snow and into the distance, then suddenly switching it off thinking "What if aliens see the beam and follow it down to me?!" Well....I was only twelve years old and a staunch follower of Dan Dare and Digby. The snow kept falling on and off until late winter gave way to a frozen early spring; a series of late frosts delaying planting in the gardens.

Does anyone have memories of that winter?

[FLY2 10,108]

If I remember, it snowed over the Christmas period, and I was at a party on Aspley Lane, opposite where Collins is now.

I felt sick and went outside but slipped on the icy pavement and was immediately sick. I awoke sometime later with my jeans and jacket frozen to the pavement. Nasty !

[NewBasfordlad 3,599]

I was on the gas board as an apprentice, very few vans in those days, foreman, emergency and deliveries only. So we got round by public transport, it was murder that winter I had to walk miles with the tool bag over my shoulder.

The good thing was making very good money on the side repairing frozen outside loos. One lad got dragged before the manager to explain why he had booked so much plumbers bar solder from the stores. Most of us were a little craftier and bought it from the plumbers merchant.

[Paulus 541]

We ( about 6 of us) built a snow barricade across Minver crescent & got boxed ears for our trouble!!

[Rob.L 1,088]

As I were but a lad, my main memory is walking through the snow on Mapperley golf course with my brother.

As we passed through a gap in the hedge between two fields, he was slightly ahead of me. While the snow was level, the ground underneath dropped a couple of feet and in an instant, he had sank into the snow up to his armpits.

That, and our school remaining open through most of it.

in those days, Westdale Infants was mostly old, draughty, wooden buildings with a quite feeble boiler in the corner of each classroom. We were all frozen, which made going to the loo worse, as it only had outside toilets open to the elements.

Kids these days don't know they're born!

[poohbear 1,360]

I was long distance driving in a van WITH NO HEATER....that was an extra and the boss was a tight sod. Driving from Nottingham to Bristol and the West country then round Devon and across to South Wales...No motorways in those days.

Not funny pulling into every lay-by and scraping the windscreen....inside and out.

The coldest night was way below freezing in a lorry park in Bristol playing cards by candlelight with another truck driver. (Couldn't find digs) A passing cop spotted us and made us follow him to the local nick where we spent the night in a warm cell....with the door open. As the cop said..."You two could die out there tonight!"

Changing a rear wheel in heavy snow in the dark on an A road just outside Burton on Trent was an experience I wouldn't repeat under pain of death. A good half hour with a crap jack and soaked to the skin by every passing truck was a laugh a minute

There were loads of jobs in those days....why I didn't tell 'em to stuff it and move on God only knows..

[colly0410 1,181]

When it started to thaw the lights went out: I was sent to the meter to put a shilling in, the lights didn't come back on. I heard a noise upstairs, shouted Mam & Dad, water was spurting from a burst pipe in the bathroom then coming down through the kitchen ceiling, then part of the ceiling came down. The stop tap was seized & dad had to use some stillsons & hammer it to turn it off. Oh what a mess. Phoned landlord who said "get it fixed & knock the cost off the rent!" So Dad got some solder (probably borrowed off the coal boards Bestwood Workshops) & fixed it himself, the ceiling never was fixed, still like it when we left in 1968..

[OrphanAnnie 296]

I was in my last year at Junior School - in Burton on Trent poohbear! - and remember my sister and I having to walk up to the garage on Ashby Road (the A38) to get a gallon of paraffin for the heater. It was Christmas Eve and it was below freezing, on the way we found a two bob coin frozen to the pavement. We prised it off and spent it on a box of maltesers at one and six for mum, and split the tanner left between us.

At the end of January we were given a task in English class to write a letter to someone in Africa or Australia and describe the snow. I got a gold star so I must have had good story telling skills!! Schools stayed open all through the freezing weather, we kept our coats on in class. I don't think it thawed until March?

[loppylugs 8,427]

I was an apprentice and we were wiring houses up on Phoenix Farm estate in Gedling. The cold really sticks in my mind. We were doing finishing work, but it was just as cold inside those houses as outside. You can't wear gloves when dealing with small tools and fingers felt like they were dropping off. I don't think I have ever felt so cold since, even in Canada.

[carni 10,094]

You should have knocked on our door Loppyugs, I was still there then. We would have made you a nice warm cuppa.

Promise we wouldn't have thrown snowballs at you.

I bet you struggled to get your van on and off the estate, with all those slippery snow covered hills. I do remember trying to walk up the hills in the snow, very difficult. We were almost house bound through the winter, only going out when we had to. Long Winter.

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Those were the years of some of the thickest pea soupers too!! Two hours to get from Hucknall to Huntingdon St bus station!!

The 62/3 winter I'm sure my company was wiring a converted house somewhere in Sherwood for an orphans home, no heating, bitterly cold. My main job was keep the mash cans hot, I found a small room that hadn't been started on by the builders and set "our camp" up in there with an old electric fire, cozy and warm for tea breaks and snap time.

If memory serves me right, 63/4 was just as cold, we were at a school at Bestwood, near High Pavement grammae school, can't recall it's name now. A new block we'd wired in "pyro".

Plasterers were held up as the days were well below freezing, then one day a thaw, they struggled to get one large classroom plastered and the temps dropped rapidly below freezing. They had to strip the lot off, weather held everything up.

[LizzieM 9,507]

I just remember that our school bus (a Trent running from Hucknall) couldn't get up Coppice Road, Arnold. It would normally go up there, along the Plains and down Arnold Lane into Gedling. Somehow the driver managed to turn the bus around and took us into town and then on to Gedling through Colwick. There was no excuse in those days ...... we went to school no matter what the elements threw at us.

[Manversboy 35]

I remember the snow starting on Boxing Day 62 and there still being piles of dirty snow in the streets the following May. To this day I've never seen snow on Christmas Day, in the UK at least.

MB

[BilboroughShirley 1,120]

I was at BGS then. For me it was a great winter as the frozen school fields meant we could not play hockey! Brilliant! I hated games. Instead they taught us square/barn dancing and that was a great laugh.

[loppylugs 8,427]

Carni #10 I would have loved to have dropped in for a cuppa, but I Din't know ya then did ah? We didn't have a van, we used to walk to and from the site. We were just apprentices, cheap labour. We had a shed to leave our tools in. Walking up and down those hills was taking your life in your hands.

#11 Ayeup. Yes those pea soupers were something else. I was dating a girl at that time she came over to our house in Netherfield one night. She lived near Castlebvd. Came time to take her home, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. No buses. She had to stay at our house for the night. (No monkey business, my parents were home, honest!!!!!) No phones on either end so couldn't let her parents know. I thought her dad would stretch my lugs even longer. Things were never quite the same after that. Often wondered who she married. Maybe she's even here on NS. Now wouldn't that be a turnup for the book.

[banjo48 928]

Remember dad being unable to work for ages, bricklayers can't lay bricks in that weather. Also getting up in the morning and we had massive snow drifts up all the doors, so had to dig our way out !

[OrphanAnnie 296]

Isn't it weird how we all remember what we were doing 40 odd years ago, and in amazing detail, yet can get half way through a sentence and can't remember what the topic was!! It's called having a CRAFT moment - Can't Remember A F....g Thing

[Chulla 4,946]

I remember our labourer coming in and telling us that the pisspot in his bedroom had frozen over.

[nonnaB 4,895]

I remember that winter having to walk home from Hyson Green Up to Cinderhill in snow as well as thick fog. A funny (not at the time ) thing happened to us here during a really bad snow fall. We lived in a group of houses in a valley. The road in and out was on a hill so when it snowed it was easy just to go downhill onto the "main road". Now here in Italy the snow ploughs are out in force so the roads get cleared fairly quickly. At that time there were 2 ploughs clearing the road. When my husband got into the car to go to work the plough had been and it had blocked the exit. Fool he was as the opposite side of the road was just fields. So hubby had to come back and fetch a spade to dig himself a space to get out. That done and arriving late to open the bar, spend the morning working and coming home at lunchtime, came to come down the hill and what does he find....the plough had blocked the entrance. Stupid again the opposite side was another field. Very hungry and annoyed he tried to plough his way through and got stuck on the top of this mountain of snow. It looked like something out of "The Italian job" as the car was rocking from front to back. It took ages to shift the snow. He complained to the local council and told them the drivers were a load of idiots. It didnt do much as they continued to block us in. Fortunately we didn't have another heavy snowfall. It lasted until May that year. We also had snow in August. All the market stalls had christmas decorations and Happy Christmas signs. Not looking forward to the snow this year.

[Compo 10,328]

I seem to recall my dad trying to dig the garden over in about mid-May and finding it still frozen to a depth of several inches (for those of you who are too young to remember inches: more than several cm).

[DJ360 6,721]

On Boxing Day we always went from Bestwood Est, to a party at my uncles place in Ruff's Est in Hucknall. In '62 I was 13 and decided to go on my bike. As I recall it started snowing early evening and soon got deep enough for me to decide to set off for home. I managed to ride all the way as far as Hucknall Road alongside Bulwell Forest Golf course. I met a bloke with his wife and a couple of kids all trying to push a motorbike and sidecar combination and tried to help, but the bloke was getting so ferociously angry I decided to bugger off and leave him to it. He was scary!

Got home pretty soon after and stoked the coal fire up. I can't remember for the life of me how my Mum, Dad brother and sister got home.

It seemed to snow for days in my memory, but I think it was more a case of successive snow falls with cold and frosty weather between, so it just didn't thaw.

We ran out of coal even though my Dad was a miner, just because the coal couldn't be moved due to the snow. We ended up burning anything we could find on the fields opposite and at one point we got a delivery of several bags of chopped up railway sleepers.

Some of the 'big lads' on our street built an igloo and it stayed up for weeks.

On a field alongside the old Rigley's wagon works, pretty much where the Ridgeway now leads to Top Valley Tesco, there had been lots of heavy vehicle movements.

This had left basically a sheet of ice, about 50 yards wide and right down to what was then known as 'Lover's Lane'. First off we found an old enamel Fry's Chocolate sign and bent it in half. ( Probably would've been worth a fortune now) We got inside it and slid down the icy slope at what seemed terrifying speed. If it got sideways it would shower us with lumps of ice as it scythed through the stuff. Great fun.

Next we found some old pressed steel shades that came off industrial flourescent light fittings. They were about 6 feet long and made great snowboards. Were we the first ever snowboarders? Not easy to stay upright, but also great fun.

Not for the first time, the pavement on Padstow Rd became one long slide from top to bottom, although sometimes anti-social residents would put coal ashes down to ruin it. Killjoys!

As reported above, I think it was well into March before it started to thaw.

And being kids, we found some fun in that too, making dams out of slushy snow in the gutter and letting them fill with meltwater before breaking them, watching the flood and doing it all over again. Simple pleasures.

Col

[Chulla 4,946]

The winter of 1946/47 was a real bad 'un. made worse by the lack of fuel. Railways couldn't shift the coal and the icy conditions lasted for ages. The schools had no coal and we were told to go home and not come back until we were told to. We were told three months later.

I remember another winter coal shortage (don't think it was the one above), and lots of people used to go to the rail yard at Babbington pit, where they were emptying bat out of trucks, and people would scramble for the bits of coal that were among the bat. I remember getting a pit prop.

Happy days.

[loppylugs 8,427]

If I remember rightly didn't the winter of 47 end with a big flood?

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Yes Dave it was the year of the flood.

I was living in North Yorks during the winter of 78/9 and that was a bad winter, Whitby was cut off from the outside world for nearly a week, snow was so deep the rail snow ploughs got bogged down, roads impassible with a few feet of snow. Supplies were flown in by RAF helicopters.

Christmas of 78, I spent with my parents in Nottingham, took the train hours to get Grantham, due to heated points being frozen!!! They had crews out with oxy acetylene to thaw them out.

Return trip, old unheated rolling stock was put into service due to the southern electric rail system being out of action and diesel electric locos moved down south. The electric locos were burning out their return cables.

We had a few weeks in the 78/9 winter where the highest temps were minus9C, God it was cold, a lot colder than the 60's winters.

I was still wearing a sweater in July of 79, just a couple weeks before I left for Oz.

[Annesleyred1865 137]

as a kid it was brilliant couldn't even remember being cold. Saw power lines on Annesley Cutting sparking, big drifts higher than the field fences and lots of sledging thats about all I can remember