In the hit parade of cold winters, 1962/63 and 1946/47 vie for the title of the worst winter of the 20th century.
But when we talk about the worst winter ever, we have a problem. Records for the UK as a whole have only been kept since 1911, though temperature records for central England do go back to the 1650s. So, we mostly rely on contemporary accounts of the effects of the cold, in both fiction and non-fiction, to try to decide whether one winter was worse than another.
Two winters stand out as really extreme. 1683/84, known as the Great Frost, saw the river Thames in London freeze over – not for a day or two, or even a week, but for two months. This caused huge harm to the economy, as goods mostly travelled by water in those days, and all the ports were frozen solid. Many poor people could not find food, and starved to death, leading to widespread protests and riots.
Little more than 50 years later, the winter of 1739/40 was, if anything, even worse. This was the height of the prolonged climatic cooling known as the Little Ice Age, and much of Britain was gripped by a severe frost, which began on Christmas Day 1739 and lasted for almost two months.
The only compensation for the benighted citizens was that frost fairs were held on the Thames, where a foot-thick layer of ice allowed a raft of entertainments to take place.
