One upside from the climate crisis is that winters in northern Europe are warmer. The coldest January since 1659, when records began in England, was in 1795 when rivers including the Thames and Severn froze over. The temperature barely rose above freezing all month.
Country parsons, who fed poor people at Christmas, gave them a shilling each to buy food for January. Grain was in already in short supply because of a dry summer and hunger became so widespread that the following spring there were bread riots.
In his diaries, James Woodforde, a country parson in Weston Longeville in Norfolk, who was troubled by gout on very cold nights, said that even the fire in the parlour made no difference. He worried that poor people were suffering badly because their vegetables were ruined by frost.
On Saturday 25 January, there was a terrible storm that took the thatch off the barn and stripped the tiles from his roof. He still managed to dine “on a couple of boiled rabbits, beef steaks etc but the wind was so tempestuous we made a very poor dinner”.
Three days later there was still a “very severe frost indeed. It freezes sharply within doors.” He also notes: “Two women froze to death Saturday last going home from Norwich market to their home.”
