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Winter 1947 photographs from the Watchet area of Somerset
Many thanks to Kevin Roscoe from Anglesey for supplying these photographs and information

Kevin writes of the 1947 winter

"The first three months of 1947 brought a paralysis of blizzard and freeze...regarded by many as nature's dirty trick on war tired people, on a country trying to struggle back to a semblance of peacetime conditions. Many Exmoor people are disposed to rank this time as the bitter equivalent of 1963, and to dispute the claim that the latter was "the winter of the century". Certainly 1947 produced a longer period of freeze.
Albert Williams, Williton Division highway surveyor, said that when the ice age ended 'my men have been sheeted in ice, had icicles hanging from their ears and gathering on their brows, telegraph poles have been iced to twice their normal width and electricity cables have measured 7 inches in diameter.'
The blizzards late in January and through February and March prompted weather correspondents to claim that this was the worst winter since the 1881 killer.
Arctic conditions had come in with the new year, there were 42 days and nights of frost, with three exceptionally violent blizzards on January 28th, February 23rd and 4th March. The last was a fall of 37 hours, the longest of the period. The freeze gripping all of Europe, was classed as the most severe, to say the least, there had been 59 days of frost from November 25th to January 22nd. There were sea freezes and ice floes on the country's great rivers, including the Severn. At Newcastle a family of six were killed when their back boiler exploded, frozen as it was, and went off like a hand grenade.
Ice breakers had to free canal traffic and reservoirs had a foot of ice on top."


I just thought you may also like to know some history of the bus in the pics

" The little bus on the photographs was driven by Arthur Priddle from Lynmouth on January 28th,1947. He was caught in a blizzard on Porlock Hill, with four passengers, Mr M.Clapp, a 70 year old man called Mr Walter Byrns, a young woman Miss Goodwin, and Mr Snell of Exeter.
They all ended up ok in a farmhouse nearby, Mr Clapp had a nasty fall as he got off the bus and had to be helped back on for a rest , it was several minutes before he could go on, the people behind in the car also were ok and went to a local house, the sun roof on the bus was no seal against the snow 'only meant to keep out the summer rain' in ten minutes the water in the radiator froze solid it was 'out or suffocate!!' and would soon be a fridge on wheels."

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