Feeling hot, hot, hot!
Soaring heatwave temperatures leaving you feeling hot and bothered? MARION McMULLEN takes a look at how we coped in summers gone by
WASHING blistering red skin in sage tea was a traditional cure for sunburn up to the Second World War. Now we splash on the highest factor sun cream and keep the after-sun lotion handy.
Long, hot British summers have always led to people trying to find the best way to handle the heat and in 1968 that meant a sun tent. It was designed with the British summer in mind by keeping out sand from beaches and cocooning you from any sudden breezes that might spring up.
Littlehampton in Sussex was one of the first to embrace the new invention and even offered sun worshippers the chance to hire a sun tent for 10 shillings a day.
Meanwhile if you wanted to stand out from the seaside crowd you needed a pneumatic beach armchair.
It first appeared at the British beach 70 years ago and was inflated by a pair of bellows. It could be spotted at Bognor Regis in 1948, but was more prone to punctures and gusts and the traditional deckchair continued to remain popular with holiday makers.
It cost sixpence a day to hire a deckchair at Blackpool’s North Pier in 1958... and it was guaranteed to be facing the sun.
The 1911 heatwave saw temperatures peaking at 92°F in the UK and some Lancashire cotton mill and stone quarry workers even began starting their day at 4.30am before heading home at noon when everything closed down as the mid-day sun hit.
Some daring women from that time found taking a dip in the Serpentine at London’s Hyde Park was the best way to cool off while horse-drawn ice seller’s carts were a welcome sight on the streets in the era before home refrigerators and freezers were the norm.
There was a mere 3.3mm of rain recorded for the whole of June in 1925 and thousands of people besieged the newly opened Tynemouth Outdoor Swimming Pool in the north east.
The gala opening included English Amateur Swimming Association ladies champion Hilda M James demonstrating fashionable swimming styles, ladies and gents water polo matches and a comic display by Tynemouth Amateur Swimming Club. The terraces were designed to hold up to 2,000 people and swimmers could use hired tents as changing rooms.
One way to find instant shade was with a parasol. The rattan summer parasol made an appearance in 1927 and the following year there were lace-trimmed parasols with embroidered designs of exotic birds and a hand-painted Chinese dragon motif to choose from.
Parasols continued to be popular – and the most effective way of staying cool – for the next few decades and in the 1950s they were even big enough to provide shade for three at a time.
The 1960s saw eye-catching slit sunglasses bearing slogans being worn on the streets of London. The cool eye wear came with messages ranging from Hold My Hand and Go Naked to Make Love Not War.
It was hot enough to cook an egg on a car bonnet during the 1976 heatwave and temperatures reached 96.6°F at one point in Cheltenham. The relentless heat caused severe drought across Europe and many countries introduced emergency water rationing.
It was one of Britain’s longest heatwates in living memory and triggered the most significant drought for at least the last 150 years. Water levels in rivers and reservoirs across dropped so low that the Drought Act was introduced and a Minister for Drought appointed. There was even talk of bringing in tankers filled with water from abroad if the situation continued.
There were 15 consecutive days when temperatures reached 89.6°F or higher somethere in the UK. Things became so desperate that an Indian rain dance was held in Rugby in September 1976, but the energetic efforts failed to produce even a light drizzle.
When summer temperatures rose in 1990, Welsh staff at The Co-operative Bank in Newport started getting hot behind the counter so were given special dispensation to wear shorts instead of their bank uniforms.
The fire services was also kept busy that year tackling heath and farmland fires that broke out because of the dry conditions.
The heat also damaged road surfaces across the country in 2006 with the cost of repairs estimated at £3.6 million in Oxfordshire alone. Speed restrictions were introduced by many train companies because of the risk of rail lines buckling.
Meanwhile, spare a thought for some of the zoo inmates who have struggled to stay cool over the years. Poor king penguin Purdy had to be hosed down in 1970 when the soaring temperatures started to cause the mum-to-be problems after she had been sitting on her egg at Crystal Palace Zoo ... for four days.