Tower and Town, October 2025 (view the full edition)The Year The Snow Stayed Till EasterIn 1947 the really bad wet weather started at Christmas and went right through. I can remember mother and us being in The Parade, and she had to pick me and Mickey up and put us both on the pram with Colin, who was a baby, because the water had come over the top of our little wellies. We were walking down through The Parade with mother after going shopping, with a big heavy brown pram, pushing it through all the water. The water had come up so high it flooded across into the New Road and along London Road. In 1963 it had snowed from Boxing Day and it went right on till Easter. Trevor had a new bike at Christmas and couldn't ride it outside. The main road was just a little narrow lane and on the side of the road were great big mounds of snow. It just stayed forever, lots of snow and ice. Properties along the London Road had a duckboard bridge to cross so you could get inside. With no school for three months, we would go out looking for snow drifts. We would walk through metre-high snow drifts right up to old Pantawick; we got soaking wet and cold walking through them. Of course, we were looking for the big snow drifts to go inside to make igloos and little dens. Up on Forest Hill there were all these dips so you could build a tunnel inside the snow. During that time, we also spent a lot of time sledging down the hills especially from the top of Postern Hill down to the lodge at the bottom. In those days there were no trees on the bank; it was just a grassy bank like a meadow. We did end up coming out into the road as at the bottom of the lodge there were huge drifts that we needed to avoid. We didn't have to worry about the traffic because nobody had a car in those days and anyway the road was closed due to the snow. It was great fun. Another great sledging spot was the Cresta Run (aptly named after the Cresta Run in St Moritz) otherwise locally known as Butterfly Alley at Treacle Bolley. We would start at the top of Granham Hill and end up nearly in the river Kennet by the washpool. It was so fast but also great fun. The following stories were all told by Laurie, Bobby, Tony, Colin, Keith and Trevor Dobie at a couple of Sunday morning meetings.
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