CARDALL’S CORNER – The Winter of 1947 – December 2016
By Rowan Parker
In January 1947, along with his 18th birthday cards, Rowan Parker received his National Service call-up papers. It snowed on and off from Christmas, but in March the snow fell in earnest, and this is Rowan’s account of a trip home from Leamington in that famously snowy Winter of 1947, nearly 70 years ago.
The roads were relatively clear ’cause they used to put black ash on them in those days – never heard of putting salt on roads then. It was clinker they used to call it. Come Wednesday 4th March, my father very magnanimously gave me the afternoon off, because I was joining the army the next day. So I and my friend, the late Alec Baldwin, decided we’d go to the pictures to celebrate my last day of freedom and we went, catching a bus outside Albert Smith’s shop on Market Hill and the bus got us there, no problem … bang on time.
As we were walking along to the Regent Cinema from the bus stop in High Street, Leamington, it started to snow – great big flakes – but we carried on. When we came out of the pictures it was dark, it was still snowing, and the snow outside the Regent Cinema was at least a foot deep. We waded round to High Street, and believe it or not, there was a bus waiting at the bus stop, so we all got on it.
Now I remember there were only about four males on the bus – the rest were Land Girls – Land Girls always had Wednesday afternoons off, so they’d all been to the various picture houses in Leamington. The next thing we know the conductor comes onto the bus and says ‘the driver’s quite willing to have a go to get to Southam, but he doesn’t think he will be able to’. ‘However’, he said, ‘we’re going to have a go’ and we set off ploughing through the snow. He got us as far as Radford Semele and actually got up the hill past the brewery and into the middle of the village by the pub. There he came to a halt ’cause someone waved him down telling him the road was blocked. There was no way he was going to get through, because a bus was across the road by the police house. So that was it. We started off walking and we were very good ’cause we were escorting these poor ‘defenceless’ Land Girls!
As we got nearer Southam it started to snow heavily again so by the time we got to the bottom of Woodbine Hill we looked like walking snowmen and we were all very tired and very cold. The boys were only dressed in wartime grade utility clothing, which was not very good quality, whereas the Land Girls were wearing thick cord trousers and army issue type greatcoats. Alec Baldwin was first to reach home on the Leamington Road and I was second on Market Hill. The remaining two lads escorted the girls to their hostel in Welsh Road West. I don’t remember much about what happened after reaching home, but later my Mother told me that I spent much of the rest of the night in agony thawing out. I had arrived home at 12.30am, so the journey had taken about 3 and a half hours. It snowed for the rest of the night and by morning there was at least 2 feet of snow and in a lot places there were drifts reaching 6 to 7 feet. I was supposed to report to Budbrooke Barracks at Warwick on 5th March 1947, but instead reported to the Police station. I did not get to Warwick until the following Sunday, but that is another story.
This 1947 image at the head of this article is from our archives and not Rowan’s bus, but shows a similar situation with another snow-bound bus near Southam.
First published in the District Advertiser, Southam edition December 2016.
The following anecdotes were received from Robert Sherriff after reading December’s Cardall’s Corner about a journey home in the snow, in the Winter of 1947.
“Rowan Parker’s account of the great snow storm of 1947 brought back many memories. It was a most eventful year altogether weatherwise with three periods that remain vividly in the memory.
As Rowan describes, the snowstorm was monumental with Midland Red buses stranded in drifts along Ufton bottom. We built igloos and dug caves but still made it to school. The road to Priors Marston was cut off for some time and we seemed to have never-ending winter sports in Broad Walk, one of my grandfather’s fields behind Brooklands, Warwick Road.
In 1947 we also had the great gale that blew down 50% of the great Elm trees on the approach to Southam from Ufton. They all lay pointing North East after the wind blew ferociously from the South West with the survivors hanging on for 30 years until the arrival of Dutch Elm Disease which wiped out the entire remaining Elm population. Up to that point the county had always been referred to as “Leafy Warwickshire”. One of the trees fell onto a Midland Red bus on the Southam to Leamington route with fatal results and after a knock on the front door at Brooklands we hosted for the night some of the Butler family who ran Ufton Post Office and garage, due to the road being completely blocked.
Before 1976, the Summer of 1947 was probably the best in living memory. It was our first family holiday and my father had a carrier made at Harbury cement works and onto this was bolted a trunk containing enough food to withstand a siege. We set off for Scotland via Bascote Heath in the 1932 Hillman 13 (UE 9925) with my mother, brother and sister in the back and me in the front as assistant driver / navigator!
When we got as far as Wetherby in Yorkshire the car gave up in the main street. We sat there all day with the traffic weaving round us as my dad tinkered with a faulty magneto. He was always a successful fixer and eventually we were on our way Northwards again. The old car got us as far as John o’ Groats and back, and the sun shone throughout. We camped wherever we stopped and father would obtain milk and water from the nearest farm. It was the first year after WW2 that most people had a holiday and like us they would think “what a wonderful world”.
1947 was certainly a year to remember for its extremes of weather.”
I remember the 1947 gale very well. I believe it took place on Sunday the 17th of April and it peaked at about 6pm. I had at that time been a rookie soldier doing my basic training at Budbrooke barracks in Warwick. I had been on w/e leave and was due to catch the 9 o’clock bus that evening to return to barracks. The bus duly arrived from Rugby on time and I a fellow soldier I knew from Dunchurch. In the the meantime one or two buses also came onto the Market Hill from various directions and it soon became clear that no traffic was going anywhere that night. The gale was still going strong too. Eventually there were six or seven buses parked on the Market Hill, all quite full of passengers. I eventually got off the bus and went across to my home at my Fathers butchers shop and made the mistake of switching the shop lights on. I think that made the shop look like a cafe because it seemed that everybody had made a bee line for it. My parents then decided to make use of the wartime emergency stocks that had been at our premises from the war, which included several big boxes of American Chocolate biscuits. I eventually went to bed but my Parents went on serving tea and biscuits until the early hours. I suppose that’s what people did in those days.