One of the most bitter winters in the 20th century was that of 1962-3. Often known as the “Big Freeze”, it saw months on end when deep snow lay on the ground. It must have felt like a new Ice Age, with no thoughts of today’s global warming.
Muriel Longhurst of Wokingham, a teacher in her mid 20s, tells us more in some letters she wrote to her friend Sheila, who had moved to sultry Palembang in Sumatra, Indonesia, with her husband in December (document reference: D/EX2840/2/15). Muriel was born in Ascot in 1936 and trained as a teacher at Salisbury Diocesan Training College, qualifying in 1956. In 1959, after a period at St Frideswide’s School in Didcot, she became one of the founder members of staff at Edgbarrow, a new Secondary Modern in Crowthorne, to which she travelled daily from her home in Woosehill Lane, Wokingham, shared with her widowed mum and her sister Ann.
Muriel first mentions the weather in a letter dated 28 December, when she enviously compares Sheila’s Singapore stopover with ‘our ice and snow’. But things soon got worse; on Sunday 30 December she writes, ‘Well, now I’ve seen everything! There was another fall of snow during the night, and the wind got up as well, with the result that we are almost cut off here’. They could not get to church as normal, ‘so I climbed through the drifts down to the farm, and have just come back to see the papers being delivered by SLEDGE. It really is the only feasible means of transport now. I can’t remember a winter like this before. Probably the main roads are better, but Woosehill Lane is practically in need of helicopter services. There is an abandoned car down near the farm, belonging to someone who tried to get through last night, and this morning the car is almost covered by drifts.’ Luckily many of the farm animals were cosily under cover in the barn, and those in the fields had sensibly taken cover in sheds. It was a struggle to get the bales of hay over to them, as ‘the snow is so deep that it is a job to walk, let alone carry anything else at the same time’. Muriel added jokily, ‘I hope you are really regretting having left such a lovely healthy climate’.
Later she writes, ‘Oh dear, there’s another car stuck outside now. I can’t think how they’ve got as far as this. Oh, it’s all right. They’re going to Smith’s and the car is full of workmen, so they’re quite capable of getting themselves out’ - minute-by-minute commentary worthy of today’s social media platforms! By the evening Muriel’s sister Ann had come home from Reading, where she worked, ‘and she says that the buses are still running, but nothing else is visible from her to Reading except 3 abandoned milk-floats. The main road is just a sheet of frozen snow’. By Monday, Muriel had dared take her car out to the shops successfully, but a neighbour had had to abandon his van with a burnt-out clutch. At least the local children were ‘having a wonderful time’ sledging!
The first lamb of the season was born on 31 December. Muriel commented, ‘Poor little thing, being born into such a bleak world’. The lambs and its cousins attracted press interest, and on 3 January Muriel reported, ‘these chappies set out in high spirits, all ready to enter into the spirit of spring and all that, with lambs gambolling merrily, spend about ¾ hour scrambling across the fields in the wake of an unconcerned farmer to whom this sort of weather is at least something he is dressed for, and then they return with their spirits noticeably dampened, and their feet distinctly wet. We have an unkind hobby of “Spot the footwear”, and so far only one reporter has been farsighted enough to bring a pair of gumboots’.
Muriel spent most of New Year’s Day clearing the paths around the house, but on 3 January she wrote ‘we needn’t have bothered’ as another foot of snow had fallen. Local workmen were clearing the same area for the third time by now - ‘as you can guess, their comments on the weather are not exactly drawing room’. It was already recognised as ‘the worst winter in living memory’. The car was unusable again by now, and the electric trains could not cope – only the remaining steam trains could melt their way through, and as they were being phased out there were not many running. But the bus was running and on time too, enabling Muriel to seek out bargains in Reading, with few rival shoppers at the Christmas sales.
A brief hopeful thaw on 5 January let Muriel to get her car dug out ready for the start of term. Local businessman Mr Smith lent some of his workmen to help. She admitted, ‘it is very easy to get a car out when all you have to do is to be terribly grateful to the poor chaps who have done the digging!’
Muriel’s mum had met a friend from Binfield, whose family ‘had been living on curried eggs for a week, as they had no means of reaching any shops to buy food’ until they could get their car out, as that area was not served by buses. Muriel herself struggled over to Finchampstead, where she was a bellringer in her spare time. The snow had blown in through the tower louvres and filled up the bells, so the first time they were swung, it all fell on the floor – or the ringers’ faces! The foreman of the bellringers was also the church sexton, and had had to borrow the council snowplough to dig graves.
She anticipated trouble in the playground when school started - ‘I can see that being a case of “the survival of the fittest” with all this natural ammunition lying about free’. She was right to worry – it was snowballs all breaktime. The ice was packed hard six inches deep on the playground, and was frankly treacherous, and the football pitches were unusable. Worse still, the heating in one block had decided to pack up – but they stayed open!
By mid January it was refreezing hard every night, ‘and walking is safe only for Judo experts and gymnasts who have learnt how to fall without hurting themselves’. Lots of people had burst water pipes – Muriel thought they were lucky that her Grandad who has living with them kept the fire on all day so they were OK. ‘Even the houses on the luxury Renway estate at Crowthorne with their central heating have been having trouble with frozen pipes. Big laugh here; their pipes are all built inside the cavity of the walls “to stop them freezing” so the only way they can be unfrozen is to rip off the skirting board and take down the inner part of the wall. I can imagine that some people are going to be somewhat grubby for a while!’
There was also a ‘go slow for more money’ by the electricity workers. Meaning electric fires ‘have given out hardly any heat; diners have taken ages to cook, and ... the kettle was nearly 10 minutes boiling. In fact, the best way to keep warm has been to get out and shovel snow (or ice rather) and there is plenty of exercise to be found in that line’.
Piles of snow cleared from the main streets in Wokingham were dumped in local fields – so high that ‘there have been bulldozers working on top of the pile (at least 15 feet up) to level it so that more can be dumped on top. It’s a fantastic sight!’ 
On 23 January Muriel wrote to tell Sheila that it had snowed yet again and was only getting colder. At least it was pretty! Muriel wrote on 24 January that the road to Crowthorne was ‘a real “Winter Wonderland”’ after fog froze. Luckily the Edgbarrow heating had been fixed so as long as Muriel could get to school she was fine. A starving fox had chased and mauled the caretaker’s poor cat (’barely more than a kitten’) - luckily it managed to escape. Snowdrifts had overflowed over hedges. One local man had taken to skiing to church!
By the end of January it looked as if it was going to thaw, for two whole days. But only a little melted, and then the snow fell again. Muriel visited Reading in early February and was not impressed - ‘it is not a cheerful town at the best of times, and today, it was most depressing. There were very few people about, and as I walked over the bridge in London Street, and looked down at the brown water full of swirling lumps of ice, and with sleet whipping across it, it reminded me of the depressing pictures one sees of the industrial north’.
Another short thaw in February was followed by yet more snow, but by the end of the month the picture was better – heavy frosts at night but some sunshine. Coal was in short supply, but the Longhursts were lucky as they could get wood from the farm. By 6 March the garden was snow-free and the lane merely bogged down in mud. It was rainy and windy, and really rather unpleasant, but at least no more snow! The school was able to start football and cross-country at last!
It was not until May that it started to feel like spring. The summer would see Beatlemania in full sway, perhaps as a reaction to the confined winter. Muriel, although only 27, was just too old for the frenzy. Writing to her friend in December 1963, she asked, 'The Beatles. Have you heard of them? They are four Liverpool boys with hair down over their eyes - and a fan club consisting of at least 90% of all English adolescent girls. In fact, beatlemania - yes, that's what it's called - is so far developed that there are Beatle books, calendars, postcards, albums, cartoons - the lot. Every child has the word Beatles written on a pencil case, ruler or rough book... So far as I, ignorant soul, can make out, their best effort so far is a song called ''Yeah, Yeah, Yeah''. No comment, I feel, is needed.'
(The song Muriel thought was called ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’ was actually ‘She Loves You’, the top selling single of 1963.)