"I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas …" by Kate Jones
Photographs from the Oystermouth Historical Association Archive
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I remember as a child waking on a winter’s morning to a strange light in the bedroom and an uncanny silence. Like the boy in Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman, I padded across the cold lino to open the curtains on a wonderful, white world – an overnight transformation of the drab to the beautiful. The only blemishes were our cats’ paw prints, deep holes in the snow, by the back door. My brother and I were up, dressed and outside before our mother could stop us - rolling snow to make a snowman. I can still recall the feel and smell of cold, wet, woollen mittens sodden with snow!
Oystermouth Historical Association Archive ~ snow photographs
1880s: Two photographs from the Gold-Dick
’Oystermouth Valley in the snow’, 1880s
This photograph, titled ‘Oystermouth Valley in the snow’, was taken from Glyn-y-Coed house looking down Newton Road and across open fields that are now Underhill Park. On the high ground to the right are Langland Villas.
The ‘castellated Gothic’ Glyn-y-Coed house (now 110 Newton Road) was built in the in the grounds of an existing house, Callencroft, in the mid-1860s for Charles Gold. He was a wealthy London grocer who had re-located with his wife and growing family to Swansea to head up his father-in-law’s tea and coffee business – Messrs Phillips and Sons in Castle Square. In the gardens of Gyn-y-Coed was a pretty hut, a dark room, perhaps where these photographs were developed and printed.
Ornamental fish pond on the lower lawn at Glyn-y-Coed, 1880s
THE GREAT BLIZZARD OF 1881: Between 17 and 21 January six inches of snow fell on South Wales. Swansea experienced ‘a strong gale of piercing cold wind accompanied by snow that drifted in every direction’ blocking roads and railways. [South Wales Daily Post]
As a consolation a local newspaper published a recipe for Snow Pancakes!
“Half a pound of flour,
1 pint of milk,
pinch of salt.
Mix to a smooth batter
stir in 3 large tablespoons of snow (quickly) and fry.
Serve with sugar, lemon or preserves to taste.”
Interesting to try but probably best to use ‘freshly fallen’ snow!
THE GREAT BLIZZARD OF DECEMBER 1908
t was the severest weather since 1895. Heavy falls of snow were blown by keen winds into 6 foot drifts. The Mumbles Press reported: ‘local unemployed welcomed the chance’ to earn money by clearing snow off the tracks of the Mumbles Railway.
Two photographs of Newton in the snow of December 1908, M.A. Clare
Clare was a prolific photographer. For over 60 years he photographed places, events and people – anything that caught his interest (and he seems to have been interested in everything). His legacy is a fascinating chronology of social and economic history during decades that saw huge changes.
A WARTIME WINTER: 1940
Monday 29 January 1940: COLD, VERY COLD. So wrote Laurie Latchford in his Swansea Wartime Diary of 1940-41. “After a period of intense cold since Christmas rain fell yesterday and froze as it fell. The trees have a silver-grey glistening coating. The bushes, fences and grass have a snow-fairy pantomime look. … The fringes of Swansea Bay have for many days looked arctic. Water seeping from the land freezes when the tide goes out and when the tide comes up again the ice is broken up and pushed into miniature cliffs a foot to two foot high and several yards wide.”
Monday 19 February 1940: “We have had real freak weather. The rain turned to sleet and the sleet to a blizzard. In two hours four inches of snow had fallen and stopped the buses. By night it was fine and moonlight. In the morning it was snowing again. In the afternoon it was clear and the snow crisp. Sylvia and I built a big snowman on the back lawn, with shells for ears.”
In the same month, Harry Libby wrote to the men from Mumbles away from home in the forces:
“We’ve been frozen to the marrow since we wrote last. The plumbers are having the time of their lives – and the kiddies in Woodville Road had ditto for best part of a week when they transformed it into as good a toboggan Run as you would find in the Land of Condensed Milk! Newton had Home Rule, so did Norton, and we only knew of the existence of Limeslade because Mr. Boyle had to come in daily for the papers! Burst pipes everywhere and the whole atmosphere a salutary reminder that the local Comforts Fund was formed not a whit too soon.” [Mumbles Letters to the Forces >]
Winters during World War II were cold, but nothing like THE WINTER OF `47.
Southend Gardens in 1947
The winter of 1947 was one of the harshest and hardest to bear, hitting the country recovering from six years of war. In the third week of January a great freeze swept in from Siberia and stayed until the middle of March. During February there was barely a glimmer of sunshine. Huge snowdrifts blocked roads and closed railway lines, cutting off communities for weeks on end. Wartime food rationing was still in place and there were shortages of just about everything from housing to labour to basic household essentials. To this was soon added a desperate shortage of fuel and power. Britain ran on coal but the piles of coal at the pits froze solid and could not be moved. Winding gears seized up and, as coal stocks dwindled, so power stations dependent on coal began to shut down. Heavy industry was forced to stop, factories were closed and coal and electricity for domestic use was rationed. Terrible storms in early March brought more snow and animals died in fields from cold and lack of fodder. Vegetables could not be dug from the frozen ground. There was real fear that, despite rationing, food supplies would run out. When the thaw came, melting snow ran off the frozen ground and parts of Britain experienced severe flooding.
But for some the snow was very exciting. An enterprising group of Mumbles lads fitted metal runners to the bottom of a builder’s ladder and took it to the top of Kings Road. From there the several ‘on board’ managed to toboggan down the hill, up and over Stanley Street right up to the school gates in Newton Road!
Digging out a railway embankment in Swansea, 1947, Evening Post
THE WINTER OF 1962-63 ~ THE COLDEST SINCE 1740
Mumbles sea front in January 1963
It started snowing just before Christmas, 1962, and the snow stayed until mid-March 1963. The winter of 1962-3 was the coldest for more than 200 years with blizzards, drifts, blocks of ice and temperatures below minus 20ºC. Even though there was some sunshine it was colder than the winter of 1947.
I missed it all, as I was (temporarily) living in New Zealand. Although we didn’t celebrate Christmas 1962 on the beach – Wellington wasn’t called ‘Windy Wellington’ for nothing - I do have photos of us sitting in the garden with our Christmas presents enjoying a warm summer’s day. Our Antipodean Christmas was certainly not ‘a white one’ and I felt rather cheated when I saw photos of massive snow drifts near our house back in England.
JANUARY 1982: 36 HOURS OF SNOW
All Saints’ church: January 1982 (photographer unknown)
It started on 7 January 1982 and did not stop for 36 hours. Bitterly cold, gale-force, easterly winds brought powdery snow and piled it into huge drifts. Trains stopped, the M4 came to a standstill and Mumbles was transformed into a winter wonderland. RAF rescue helicopters worked non-stop air-lifting people to safety and helping famers trying to prevent their animals from freezing to death. The Australian rugby team had a shock when they found themselves snowed into their hotel in Porthcawl!
Langland Bay, 1982
Western Mail supplement on the Blizzard of 1982
Bracelet Bay, December 2017, Kate Jones
Snow is fun when you are young; not so when you are older and have to get to work or the shops, when slipping might mean a broken ankle – or worse. A White Christmas would be lovely – so long as it was just that. I have a very special memory of coming home from midnight mass early one Christmas morning as the first flakes of snow drifted silently down.
Kate Jones, December 2020
All Saints’ Nativity,
2019, Barbara RichardsMore: Articles by Kate Jones >