IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
Alan Crosby reveals how our ancestors coped with a freezing-cold Christmas
Alaconic entry recorded among the burials at the parish church of St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, for 10 December 1577 reads “John dyed in ye streate”. Winter, with its ice and frost, freezing winds and deep snows, was when parish clerks and clergy, writing up the registers, might have to note such cases – here, a man known to nobody except by his first name. Perhaps John was a stranger passing through or maybe he came from a ship anchored in the river, or possibly he was a wanderer, a vagrant who simply collapsed in the street. Did he succumb to cold and hunger, to be picked up lifeless and carried to the churchyard for Christian burial? We can never know, and even 444 years ago they knew little more.
Winter weather was at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Facts about temperatures, rainfall and wind speed were in short supply, but memories were long. There’s no doubting the truth of a statement made in the register of Alburgh, Norfolk, in December 1739. That winter was, by most reckonings, the second most severe in the past four centuries (after that of 1683/1684), and the incumbent recorded the baptism of Catherine, the daughter of Daniel and
Winter weather was at the forefront of everyone’s mind
Elizabeth Richards, on “the coldest day ever known in the memory of the oldest man living”. I hope for the sake of the baby that they warmed the water in the font! Entries in other Norfolk registers tell the same tale. A week after Catherine’s christening William Gooderham was buried at nearby Tharston: “He was found almost Dead with the coldness & Severity of the memorable hard Frost which continued for about 11 or 12 weeks.”
In those bitter winters of the 18th century the hazards of foot travel at times of blizzards are recalled in parish registers. At Briston in north- east Norfolk is the burial entry for 19-year- old William, the son of Thomas Bell of that parish. William, described as a bachelor and a pauper, had set out immediately after New Year from Burnham Market to walk the 16 miles to Briston, to visit his father. In the parish of Swanton Novers, only two miles short of his destination, he was “unfortunately lost in a Drift of Snow, on ye Evening of January 4 and was founded Dead on January 12”. The vicar could not pass by this opportunity to moralise on the case: “Let this be a warning to all youth, whoever they are & whatever they neglect, to be anxious to be ascertained of their Interest in Christ, then Death will be welcome in any form he may appear.”
The unknown wanderers who died in perishing winter weather might be the missing links in our family trees, but of course their lives are beyond recovery – a forlorn note made by a clergyman is their only memorial. At Methwold in southwest Norfolk half of the parish was in the watery Fens, and much of the remainder was the empty expanse of sandy commons called the Warren. To wander onto that featureless, trackless land in the dark and cold of winter was to risk your life – at the beginning of February 1766 the incumbent recorded the burial of “a woman found on our Warren, Perish’d in ye snow”.
Record-breaking weather sometimes produced eloquent memoranda from incumbents and clerks who were simply amazed by the phenomena they witnessed. Let’s leave the last word to the rector of Cley-next-the- Sea, on the north Norfolk coast. Reviewing the year 1739/1740 he noted, “A Very severe Frost which Lock’d all ye Harbours in ye Kingdom, render’d ye Road by ye Marsh-side leading from Clay to Glandford impossible, there were hundreds of loads of Ice thrown into ye Road by ye Tides; Some Peices of Ice were more than 20 feet long and 8 or 10 feet Broad and 2 or 3 feet thick. A surprising sight!”