The recent heatwave in the UK broke the previous June record of 35.6C, recorded during the 1976 heatwave.
In Lingwood, Norfolk, a provisional temperature of 37.7C was recorded on Friday 26 June, breaking the previous record reached on 28 June 1976 and on 29 June 1957.
We asked people to share their memories of the 1976 heatwave. How did they cope, and how did it compare with the 2026 heatwave?
Here are some of their responses.
‘It was a shock to the country’
“The context of the 1976 heatwave was very different,” says Margaret Waring, 87, from Cambridge. “We had a drought. It was a shock to the country because it had never happened like that before.”
At the time of the heatwave, Margaret worked in Manchester teaching geography, meteorology and climatology in secondary schools. “I’d come home and then we would sometimes share a bath. We’d have to work out who would go in the bath first and not make it too dirty. I had two teenage children and a husband at that time. We didn’t have a shower.
“We devised a siphoning system with a garden hose out of the bathroom window into a plastic bin lined for watering the vegetable patch. And the flowers and the grass were ignored. We also saved water from the washing machine.”
Water aside, the current heatwave is more uncomfortable, says Margaret. “The heat didn’t seem to be as restricting as it is now. The high humidity and the temperature make it harder to cope. There’s a lot more pollution in the atmosphere. There has been an unbelievable change over the last 50 years. But you can come home and you can have one of three showers now.”
‘The reservoirs were empty’
John Ellis, 72, says sitting his finals at Oxford in full gown, shirt, jacket, heavy trousers, mortar board and bow tie during the heatwave of 1976 was “exhausting”.
“The examination schools building was boiling,” he says. “It was Victorian, very tall, with a lot of light streaming in. We were allowed to take off our gowns only! We had nine papers between Thursday and Tuesday; it was intense.”
Once his exams were over, John, who is a retired FE lecturer and is now a crime writer, headed back home to Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, to see the “reservoirs empty”, including Ladybower in Derbyshire, “just over the hill from Huddersfield”, and the “remains of long-flooded villages exposed” like Derwent.
Today, John says he finds it harder to cope in the heat. “I don’t know if it is an age thing, but the sun feels stronger, you feel like you’re going to burn quickly, and the heat is so enervating.
“Summers like 1976 were rare, unfortunately we’ve missed a chance to really stop this. We should have been cutting down on carbon emissions 25-30 years ago, so a measure of this is now inescapable. I think we can still stop it from getting worse if we continue to cut the emissions, but we are going to have to adapt to what’s here now.”
‘I was pregnant and we had no water’
Susan Gilliam, 79, was pregnant with her first child in a flat in Crystal Palace at the time of the heatwave.
“It was fairly awful because it was so very hot and so very dry,” she says. “In the summer I was lying about doing as little as I could. The birth was difficult, but after that it was almost worse because we had no water. The only water we had was in the toilet. You’d turn on the taps, and nothing would come out.
“When my son was born, there was nowhere to wash his nappies except in the actual toilet. It was disgusting. We used the one bucket of water that was delivered to us by a lorry each day. You’d queue up with a bucket. They didn’t allow you more than one. You’d get your bucket full and that was it for the day.
“The flat was very well insulated, but not fit for purpose during that heat. I used to take the baby out for walks in Crystal Palace Park.”
‘It just got hotter, and hotter, and hotter’
Mark Hainge, 68, from Hay-on-Wye, recalls a gruelling summer training as an officer cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in May, 1976.
“It just got hotter, and hotter, and hotter,” he says, “We were given an occasional break – you’d call it a hydration break, I suppose – to guzzle water from a standpipe, a bit like feeding cows. People were ingesting vast quantities of water just to see themselves through the next eight hours.
“At the end of a day’s training, our big old-fashioned khaki flannel shirts would be absolutely soaked through, so you had no option but to wash it, iron it dry, and get it on again, ready for the next day. You don’t really question it, aged 18. I think if you made me do it now, there’d be a few questions.”
Like the temperatures, standards at the academy were high. “We could expect the tiniest details of our uniform and turnout to be inspected on parade. After a gruelling hour on the main parade ground, the Scots Guards colour sergeant in charge of our platoon decided to enjoy himself. ‘Mr Hainge – show boots!’
“I bent one leg behind me so that he could check the soles of my boots. ‘Dirty boots Sir!’ he yelled in triumph before marching me off the parade square and into the guardroom jail. My ‘crime’ was to have allowed the soles of my boots to collect some of the melting tarmac from the parade ground.”
‘I couldn’t have wished for a better job’
Being close to water during the heatwave of ‘76 makes a difference to people’s memories of that time. Michael Keane, 71, who was a lifeguard in London, recalls it as the “perfect summer”.
“I couldn’t have wished for a better job as a lifeguard in an open-air swimming pool; there was a lot of laughing and joking going on,” he says.
Michael worked at King George’s park open-air swimming pool in Wandsworth, south-west London, which has since closed.
“I had multiple rescues that summer and lots of memories,” says Michael, who is retired and lives in Oval, south-west London.
At one point that summer, the pool had to be closed because the water was so murky and visibility was so poor. “It was a bank holiday too, apparently, people broke in anyway,” he says.
Although retired, Michael is still a keen swimmer in lidos, pools, and in the sea.
In this heatwave, if he is struggling, he finds the coolest room in the house and “stays there”.
“I’m lucky enough, I’ve got a bit of a wisteria on my house that keeps it a bit cooler,” he adds.
‘I got sunstroke twice’
Tracey, 57, who grew up in Devon, says she remembers the 1976 heatwave well, even though she was only seven, not least because she got sunstroke “twice”.
“You didn’t slap on the sunscreen and wear a hat and cover up like you do now,” she says. “You got burned, basically. I remember my mum, my sister, and I got sick a lot that summer.”
But unlike many people, they had a source of water nearby.
“We lived on the edge of Totnes, and luckily our house had spring water which did not dry up,” she says. “We would be seeing people on the TV having to collect water from a standpipe, but we didn’t have to deal with any of that.”
Tracey, who now lives in central Sweden and grows and sells vegetables, recalls that the family were very careful with their water usage.
“The earth was baked hard and cracked, but there was absolutely no watering the garden, and at school, I remember there were stickers on the toilets that said: “Flush if you must.”
Tracey, who says she didn’t like the recent hot weather – temperatures in southern Sweden topped 36C recently – adds: “Luckily we have our own well”.
But the lessons learned during the 1976 heatwave have stayed with her.
“They have stuck with me ever since,” she adds. “I water my garden with rainwater – I have five 1,000 litre tanks, as well as barrels to collect water. I don’t like to waste water even now.”
‘You couldn’t walk without stepping on ladybirds’
The thing I remember most in the heatwave was the ladybirds,” says Susie Wardell, 80, who lives in Saltburn-by-the-Sea. My husband and I were living at the time on a houseboat on the river Medway in Kent. The ladybirds got into everything – particularly the water tanks.
“We were moored along a boardwalk on a marina, and you couldn’t walk on it without stepping on them. There were just hundreds of them everywhere. It lasted a couple of weeks. That was my main memory of 1976.”
The advantage to living on a boat at the time was that Susie wasn’t badly affected by water shortages. “We were not excessive water users anyway,” she says.
The current heatwave hasn’t bothered her as much, she says. “It’s fine, as long as you drink plenty of water and go out with a hat on.
“I haven’t seen one ladybird this summer,” she adds.
