Ladies' Guild Meeting - March 2009
This year we held our first meeting in March. Our February meeting was cancelled due to the snow and ice and so our subject for the evening's talk was very appropriate.
Many years ago, story telling was a skilled art that entertained many groups; storytellers were respected and admired. We were lucky to have Julia Leafe, a Guild member, who talked about the winter of 1947. The ladies were absorbed, very silent and very interested. Julia made her talk sound like someone who was enjoying her memories. She needed no prompts. The talk flowed with such ease that we knew it came from the heart and that she had many enjoyable childhood memories.
Julia and her sister lived with her parents in the village of Bygrave, near Baldock in north Hertfordshire. Bygrave had a Saxon church, a Victorian vicarage and a pretty manor house as well as some rented houses. Julia's family lived on Weedon Way with open fields facing east to bring in the cold snow. The end of 1946 was unseasonably cold. The end of the war had brought austerity, rationing which was more severe than ever, a new Labour government with ideas of nationalisation, troops maintained in Europe and problems with dock strikes. Then the New Year brought snow, starting on January 28th and lasting until 10th March. Disaster hit the country; everything was disrupted and ruled by the weather. Coal trains only moved with great difficulty, if at all. Everything was powered by coal. The coasts were iced and so docking was dangerous. Ports had difficulty functioning. There were real fears of starvation and some thought that the government was scared. Meanwhile, Julia and her sister enjoyed the snow. They had had a very safe and ordered life with school buses, home for tea in front of the fire, lit for the evening and children's programmes on the radio. Bike riding, Sunday School parties with teachers using their precious sweet rations to buy the children sweets, farm fields and orchards all contributed to a pleasant childhood. The Sunday School party was at the end of January. Ten children from Bygrave walked to the party through the cold. Their voices bounced and reflected, while the dusk was light on the snow. Their coats were put nearest the fire because they had the longest walk. Games and fish paste sandwiches, fairy cakes and jelly duly enjoyed, they waited for some of the Dads to collect them. Julia's father came alone. She still cannot believe that he got 10 cold children, some without hats, gloves and boots, back through the snow. He piggy backed them in turns and was jolly and encouraging on the two and a half mile journey home up a hill.
February was icy, the school bus did not always run but, to their joy, the lower sheep field froze to become a sliding paradise. If the bus did not come or they missed it, the joy continued. Her father however had no joy as his car was in the garage all winter. He had to cycle to Baldock and then travel on to Stevenage to work. He was not paid for the days that he did not manage to get there.
Julia does not remember being hungry but she was always cold. The coal and coke bunkers were empty. Her father chopped all the spare wood including the chicken and duck coops for firewood. The ducks and chickens were put into one shed and survived as the family trudged through the snow to feed them. Her father loathed the task of killing one for the table but had to endure it from time to time. It was so severely cold that her mother put the two girls in one bed, put all the covers on them and topped it with grandmother's fur coat. There was one fire in the sitting room; they wore their coats everywhere else.
Julia told us that March 5th 1947 had the biggest snow of the century. The back porch of her house was snowed in and people had to dig from house to house. The village was snowed in. An unlikely figure became the hero of the hour. Mr Flintoff, the bailiff, wasn't popular with the children because he complained to their parents of any rules infringed or of poor behaviour. He chased children around the village on horseback for such crimes as scrumping, knocking down corn stooks, using rope swings or climbing on hayricks. However, he made the hazardous journey to Baldock to get help when the village was snowed in.
He asked for volunteers at the cinema and digging teams were organised. The villagers dug towards them and met up on a sunny day, which made the diggers warm as they worked. (Julia was there wearing a summer dress with her gym slip on top because they had to wear anything that was clean; it was very hard to dry washing.) The rescuers brought bread and milk and, I expect, a great feeling of liberation for the adults.
As the temperatures rose, our intrepid Julia fell through the ice, luckily it was not too deep and so she walked home dripping. The melt water lay on the frozen fields. There was concern about the bungalows flooding and so sand bags were provided. Attics had had snow blow through their eaves and so homes were in danger of leaking ceilings. Spring brought flowers. The summer was warm, the Queen married Prince Philip, the USA financed Western Europe and so life began to look more promising. Julia had mentioned that the adults coped with all the problems. I wonder if we would do so well now.
We really went back in time for this meeting and it brought memories of cold winters and childhood in the snow.