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Winter 1947

Di.Poppitt

Di.Poppitt

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
I can't remeber when it started to snow that year, but I do know that in March the snow was piled high on the footpaths and I couldn't see over the top of it. There were gaps left so that you could cross the road.
On March 2nd I went with mom down to the post office at Witton circle as soon as it opened at 9 0'clock, to send a telegram to an aunt to tell her that the baby mom was expecting was on its way, and would she come. I was so excited, I was nine and had no idea where the baby was. :!: Children weren't told, anything to do with pregnancy was all whispered behind hands.
Aunt Hilda arrived and we all sat around watching the snow and drinking tea, I remember mom saying she coouldn't eat a thing, but she spooned codliver oil and malt into herself by the spoonful. It was Saturday and dad's pint came before anything else, so he went off to the pub, and no sooner he'd gone than it was panic stations. I was sent next door, so I don't really know what happened until I was taken home to find that dad had got home and straight away went to fetch the midwife. By this time it was foggy, one of the old peasoupers that shrouded the city in a blanket so that you couldn't see your feet. He left the house, he would have been unsteady on his feet by this hour, :roll: and crawled along the road following the kerbstone, but at the end of our road he had to cross The Broadway which is a wide road, and take a right hand dog leg. He got into the middle of the road apparently and couldn't find the opposite pavement. He eventually got to the midwife who led him back home by the light on her bikeand my beloved sister was born during the nght
The snow went on falling and schools were closed, so I was at home and sent to do the shopping. I went for bread one day and at four in the afternoon the baker hadn't arrived, so I stood and waited because we didn't have any bread at home, and what was dad going to take for his snap without it. Dad got home from work, dug his way in through the back door in a blizzard and found mom having a fit because I was missing. He came to find me just as the bread arrived. :D
I got chilblanes from cold feet and wellies, oh how I hated those wellies, I can remember now how cold my feet were, and the itchy toes when I toasted them in front of the fire, fighting my way through the washing which was always draped in front of it.
Happy days :D
 
:D Hi Di I told you we must be sisters  :lol: as I was born in 1947 :lol:  and I also used to get  terrible chilblains on my toes :( , mine were due to bad circulation of my blood because I have a kidney problem. No one knew about my kidney problem back then (the condition was unknown) They couldn't understand why mine got so infected and did not respond to treatment. It was not until I was having my second baby that I discovered that I had been suffering from birth with the kidney problem and all sorts of things from my past fell into place, I was also told that I should never have had my children as the condition to pregnant woman can be life threatening. So I'm really pleased I had not found out sooner as I’m a coward and would not have ended up having my two great children and great friends, or their little offsprings :) .
 
We must be sisters Pom, I got a kidney infection when my babes were born :!:

It's ok Dave, everybody is younger than me, aaaaaaaah. :D
 
Yes Sheila I think we were a bit tougher. I think my dad walked to the Dunlop in Erdington for a while, because the buses couldn't run, and if you didn't go to work you didn't get paid.
We got our coal from Mr Drury, he was married to a friend of mom's, so we never were short of coal when it was hard to get, We must have had a good stock that winter, because mom had a fire in her bedroom, lovley little fire grates weren't they, and I used to sit up there with her and the new baby. :D
 
1947, Well that was the one and only time l walked on water. Down the cut from one side to the other and l remember were the ice was broken it looked to be a foot thick. That winter l remember more than any other as we had never ever had a winter like that one before.
 
Hey Di!!! I was born in 1947 and my earliest recolection was saying to my mom........"Hey mom......am I a REAL Polar Bear" :2funny: :2funny:
 
I remember that winter of 1947 Di, it lasted for about four months with the temperature never rising above freezing, deep snow lay around for months. In our street which was a cul de sac we (the kids) rolled great big snowballs from one end to the other - the wall end, and made a den. As it wasn't that long after the war coal was in short supply and factories were on short time, because of cuts to the electric supply.

I remember crying many times from the cold, although we always had a fire it was only in the living room, the rest of the house was freezing and icicles formed on the inside of the kitchen window, and the taps also froze overnight.

Our outside toilet also had a burst pipe and it was like a ice grotto with icicles two or three feet long. We did have some fun though making slides in the school playground which had quite an incline. In those days we didn't have such warm clothing and fur lined boots like we do nowadays, so when you got home it took ages to thaw out.

When the summer came eventually it was one of the hottest recorded.
 
There is always something to jog your memory right back. This time for me Sylvia it's the slide. We never had a winter without them did we. They wouldn't be PC now, imagine walking across a pavemnet and slipping on a kids slide...............
 
THATS THE YEAR I WAS BORN IN THE SEPTEMBER WHEN WAS ALL THE SNOW THE BEGINING OR THE END OF 1947
JOHN EDWARD
 
Hi John, I was only 7 at the time but wow what times we had, I lived in Moss Vale Grove in Ward  End,one memory is seeing the lads I played with roll a giant snow ball ( it must have been 6ft dia) down Glen Park Road Hill
it picked up so much speed by the time it reached our Grove, which was at the bottom of the hill it smashed though a front garden wall and upto the front door,THAT WALL WAS STILL DOWN WHEN I LEFT TO LIVE IN ASTON some months later. As for "when was all that snow" if my memory serves me right it was JAN,FEB,MARCH of 1947.
 
I was nearly 14 during the cold winter of 1947, and remember quite a few things, especially not having to go to school. I seem to remember there was no electricity between 9 am and 12 noon, and 2 and 5 pm. Certainly there was no radio. Coal was very, very short, but as my mum still had contact with the Public Works Department, she was able to get hold of old wooden paving setts, and we were able to keep warm with them, but you had to put up some kind of protection, because the top had usually had been covered with tar and chippings, and the grit would burst in the heat, spitting out burning tar on to the carpet. I remember that smell well!
Reading my old nan's diary I see that as soon as Monday 6 January, when she was due to go back to teach at All Saints' Infants, the school didn't reopen, but it did next day. Monday 20th was very cold, but on the Wednesday she got 3 cwt coal delivered. The snow started on Friday 24 Jan, and they left school early. The school closed on Monday 3 February at 10.15 am, but she went back for two hours on the Friday morning. They closed again for a half-term weekend from Thursday 13th to Tuesday 18th ("better attendance"). The serious cold seems to have started, with heavy frost and blizzards from 25 February. She had two burst pipes on the Tuesday and the electricity cut ot on Wednesday. There was next to no heating in the school, and few kids were turning up. From 10 March was to have been "Education Week", but that was cancelled because of the weather. The first thaw started on Saturday 8 March, but it took a week for the snow to melt. Sunday 16 March was the first day of summer time, and I remember going on my bike next evening to view the flooded River Tame at Walsall Road - see the pic which I think appeared in the Bham Mail that evening. Brookvale Road was also under water down at the Tame Road end, and I believe buses were diverted via College Road, Aldridge Road and Perry Barr for a day or two. The Midland Red buses on the Walsall Road were certainly diverted via Church Road and Aldridge Road. A few days later I remember walking alongside the railway from Bromford Land down to Aston Church Road, and seeing that the 'slow' track was occupied by a continuous line of coal trains following each other 'on sight' (that is without observing signals) from the coalfields of Leicestrershire, Notts and Derbyshire to the various gasworks. I never saw that again.
We certainly had it cold that year, but never as warm as it is these days.
Peter
 
:angel: What a great write up of that time Peter, my Mom had two young babies at that time and would have also been pregnant with me during part of that time frame.
It must have been very hard for people with very young children to keep them warm and fed with hot meals if there was little or no coal to be had.

Chris :angel:
 
I can recall standing at Witton Circle, Peter and seeing the road under the railway bridge under water. There were crowds watching and some possibly not able to get home.
 
Photo in the newspaper in 1947 shows the Co-op milkman in delivering his milk in Tame Road and Brookvale Road Witton
 
Thanks for the photos Cromwell. The River Tame has come up a few times but the
meltdown from those 1947 snowfalls must have caused no end of problems.None of us who were at an age to remember that winter have forgotten it.

My bedroom faced north and was freezing cold in the winter. That winter it seemed to snow almost every night and I would scrape the ice off the window to watch the snow piling up outside. It was quite magical until you had to struggle to school in it the next day.

We all wore rubber wellies and the snow was so deep it just came over the top
of them. I had chilblains and my hands got so frozen they ached when they started warming up. It seemed that during those cold Brit winters that you hardly ever got warm during the day. You started off in a freezing cold house putting on your clothes,
travelled to work or school in unheated buses after having wait for interminably for
them to arrive. The offices and schools weren't exactly hot houses and when you left at the end of the day you started the process all over again. Very often no one was home all day and who ever arrived home first had to light the fire and it took most of the night to get the the main living room warm! At one point I managed to get a hot water bottle which was an absolute godsend.
 
I remember lots of Lorries and gangs of men putting the Snow on these lorries in Newtown Row then taking it to Blew Street Park and after school we would go there and slide down these piles of frozen Snow it seemed to last forever before it was gone. Time early part of 1947 Happy Days :D
 
I really hated those black wellies. Your feet were soooo cold, and covered in itchy chilblains which my mother used to rub with raw onion ::)

We had a little Valor parrafin heater which always smelled, but it was our portable central heating and went from living room to kitchen once the fire was lit on cold winter mornings. We also had a black lead grate which radiated heat, with a curb that had seats either side. That was my perch, I would sit there for hours readiing a book.
 
Hey, Johnedward, Downunder and Pom - 1947 was a great year wasn't it?  I was born in January of that year :)  Good company! :)
Di, that was a lovely posting - thank you for sharing those memories. :smitten:
 
Hey Chris my Mom would have been Pregnant with my youngest Sister who was born on 13 August that year :)
 
We lived 5 Moss Vale Grove in the winter of 1947 & I recall Mom trying to open the kitchen door (which opened on the a side passage running along the house about a ton of snow fell in to the kitchen, Dad had to dig us out in order we could get in to the back garden and up to the garage it was like some thing out of Scott of the Antartic, a tunnel through the snow to the outside world. what a great adventure this seemed to be for a 6 year old.
ASTON
 
Liked that story Aston. Along our street they built up walls of snow and they seemed like towering walls of snow to a six year old. Dad made us a sledge and took us to Witton Lakes Park where everyone else's Dad was there with his kids and his homemade sledge.
 
Well I'm glad to say I was born in April of 1947 as well.....my Mom she had a problem getting to Loveday St where I was born, because of all the snow....I just presumed it was normal weather...I'm also told 1947 was and excellent year for wine! Maybe we should get together and celebrate after all it is 60 years ago...... ..cheers Joy
 
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