The Big Freeze, late 1962 through to March 1963
By: It's December 22nd 1962 and everyone was getting things ready for the coming Christmas.. and then it started to snow.. and it snowed and snowed and then snowed some more. Britain had seen nothing like it for some two hundred years (c1740-ish). At this time the UK was far behind some other countries for home comforts.. many houses did not have anything other than a cold water tap (faucet) and many houses lacked 'indoor facilities', indeed, the toilet was often outside in a yard area where it was dark and cold. For some this continual snowfall was something quite awesome.. schools were kept closed so the youngsters loved it but the housewife had a lot to do keeping the family fed and bedded did not like it at all! Again, only a tiny fraction of the Housing Stock had central heating of some type.. probably ninety percent of all houses used coal for heating (and sometimes cooking) so only one fire per house even if there's six rooms there was only one room with a coal fire going - namely, the sitting room. (Interestingly: the term 'The Smoke' for London in general, came from the long distance road hauliers who said the knew they were getting close to London by the shear amount of smoke issuing forth from many millions of coal fires all burning away day and night, they said you could see the smoke from some twenty miles away!) Anyway, that's the back story now take a look at a piece of old film from the sixties.