December 1946 started windy and rainy, but there was a cold snap on the 16th. Temperatures fell suddenly, with a low of -14C recorded at Yeovilton in Somerset. Heavy snow fell across south-east England. By the 22nd a thaw set in, and it seemed to be all over. But this was just a curtain-raiser for the hardest winter in living memory.
1946-47 was not the coldest, but it was the snowiest winter ever. An anti-cyclone remained stationary over Scandinavia from the middle of January, producing cold easterly winds and repeated snowstorms. Snow built up which did not thaw until March. Drifts 7 metres deep were reported in places.
The country was still living in the aftermath of war. Coal was rationed, as it would be until 1958, with each family limited to 50 hundredweight (2,500kg) a year. This was when people still cooked on coal ranges and relied on coal-fired boilers for hot water.
Coal stockpiles had been run down, and as rivers froze, ships carrying coal were held up. Power cuts were instituted and factories closed. Fences and garden trees became firewood. People shivered in chilly beds under layers of clothing.
Vegetables were frozen into the ground. The meat ration was reduced; the government compensated with imports of whale meat and a tinned fish called snoek. Neither was popular.
Britain soldiered through the hard winter, having been inured to privation by the war, but it raised difficult questions about the effectiveness of Clement Attlee’s Labour government.
