JANUARY 2013
LOOKING BACK ON THE BIG FREEZE
IT’S 50 years since Britain experienced its coldest winter for over two centuries.
Central South England was blanketed in snow for months on end and was in the grip of what became known as The Big Freeze.
The severe and freezing conditions arrived late December 1962 and lasted until early March 1963.
Roads were blocked, villages cut off and the region’s transport system badly disrupted and two people froze to death after being trapped in their car, which got stuck in deep snow near Weymouth.
Dorset, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Wiltshire and Berkshire were hit hard by the Big Freeze that left its mark on towns and villages across the UK.
Snow was piled up to tops of hedgerows and rural lanes buried under deep drifts until the ploughs cleared them.
For instance, following one of several blizzards that hit the area that winter, roads at Petersfield were buried in 15ft drifts and even on the Isle of Wight which has relatively mild winters compared with the mainland, deep snow trapped machinery used the clear the white stuff at Blackgang Chine. Some island villages remained cut off for weeks after a blizzard hit the popular summer holiday destination in the first week of January 1963 and blocked nearly all roads.
Southampton had snow on the ground continuously from Boxing Day 1962 until March 5 1963. In rural areas some of the snow did not melt until nearly April.
And even the sea froze over at Poole Harbour in Dorset, pack ice on the Solent and stretches of the River Thames in Berkshire froze. Once the Big Freeze set in it was reluctant to release its icy grip and it was the first week in March before thermometers climbed above zero in many places. There were a few days when the temperatures were high enough for precipitation to fall as freezing rain but these were few and far between because the winter was dominated by bitterly cold easterly winds feeding in icy blasts from continental Europe.
However, unlike many snowy winters 1962-3 didn’t end with flooding as the thaw came, because bright sunshine absorbed the melting snow.
I was nine years old when the Big Freeze arrived but I can clearly recall that winter. I was living at Oakley Lane in Mottisfont at the time and had to walk about a mile to the village school. My route took me along narrow country lanes that were almost impassable because of the deep snow that had piled up between the hedges each side of them. I will always remember using Benger’s Lane, which was almost entirely buried under mountainous snowdrifts for weeks on end. These drifts towered above me and the best way I can describe them is to say they were like enormous mushroom ledges reaching heights of at least eight foot.
And just like other kids of the day I would knock overhanging sections of the drifts off in the road as I made my way to and from school. Pigeons in their hundreds lay dying of cold in kale fields in Oakley Lane. I often used a footpath through the fields linking Oakley Road with Oakley Lane and these were blanketed in deep snow and as you walked through them, sank in to huge drifts that towered above your head.
The New Forest’s Dartford warbler population was almost wiped out during the Big Freeze but fortunately years later the species made a comeback. Wrens also suffered along with species such as the firecrest and goldcrest.
The 1962-63 winter was the coldest on record since 1740. However, 1947 was snowier than 1962-63