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Doc
Keeper of the Scrolls
2010 Posts
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 Posted -
25/10/2004
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20:33
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The snow of fourty-seven
edited by Rob Blann
Yorkshire lass Janice Martin emailed us with a beautiful poem written by her mother Edna Dolphin (nee Stephenson), who was born in 1935 at a place called Cowling in North Yorkshire and went to the local County school there.
Incidentally, it was the same village school where Lord Warton, Philip Snowden the first Chancellor of the Exchequer, was educated in his early years.
In her schooldays, when she wrote this poem, Edna was a country girl living at Stott Hill Farm.
She now lives at Sutton-in-Craven near Keighley, West Yorkshire, and the following poem is from a book of her poetry published in aid of the oncology unit at her local Airedale Hospital.
THE SNOW OF FOURTY-SEVEN
I remember the big snow, of forty-seven,
To a child of about twelve, your idea of heaven.
It seemed to snow, just day after day,
Oh how I did wish, I could go out and play.
It snowed and it snowed, and it snowed until,
It reached to my bedroom window sill.
An idyllic scene, all covered in white
The hills, roads, and wall tops, all lost from sight.
If you went for a walk, you were striding through cliffs,
With swirls and curls, of ten foot high drifts.
We'd set off for school, with our wellies and spade,
To dig our way through, for a path to be made.
We all leapt for joy, when Jack Frost did his worst,
And our teachers announced, "The school boiler has burst".
The icicles, hung there like great stalactites,
We would suck them like lollies, we had snowball fights.
Rolled a snowball along, till it came to a stop,
Then we did one much smaller, to put it on top.
Put in coal for the eyes, and a large carrot nose.
A scarf round the middle, lest our snowman he froze.
He froze that's for sure, but he looked awfully nice,
When the big thaw set in, he was just solid ice.
He took such a long time to thaw out and melt,
That his scarf slowly slipped, till it looked like a belt.
When the snow had all gone, I felt really quite sad,
But no one could steal all the fun I'd had.
It really was great, a child's dream of heaven,
That memorable snow, of nineteen forty-seven.
Edna Dolphin (nee Stephenson)
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Hatepe (R.I.P.)
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Posted - 25/10/2004 : 21:01
A very nice poem indeed - not many of you will remember the heavy snow in 1947, I'd just been sent home from the Navy on reserve and had just got a job at Weston Engineering in Foulridge, I was living in Kelbrook. I didn't miss a day's work, I walked to Foulridge on the top of the farm walls from the Stone Trough to Foulridge and the same home at night. I suppose that nowadays everyone would either stay at home or ski to work, Eh????
Regards Bob King (Hatepe)
R.W.King |
Ken
Local Historian & Researcher
577 Posts
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Posted - 25/10/2004 : 21:17
I was 15 months old,living on the Ranch at Earby, my mum tells me I crawled out into the snow and was lost for a while(shades of Captain Oates?)
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 26/10/2004 : 05:50
The funny thing about that winter is that I was 11 years old and can't remember a thing about it! Perhaps Stockport was very good at snow clearing!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Another
Traycle Mine Overseer
6250 Posts
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Posted - 26/10/2004 : 11:14
Can't go back to 1947 but 1963 was a good year for snow. The Wisick was blocked on the road from Earby to Skipton for a while and the trains did'nt run. I missed school for about a week and spent most of that time making snow caves on Salterforth Road near the egg packing factory.
" I'm a self made man who worships his creator"  |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 26/10/2004 : 12:42
1963 was notable for me more because of the hard frost that lasted for weeks. At that time I was on the tramp and we had to take our own water into transport cafes as the mains were all frozen up. Many wagons had no heaters in those days and I can remember clearly having to stop to scrape the condensed water off the inside of the winscreen where it had frozen. I was once given a tip by a policemen, put lemonade into the winscreen washer bottle. It worked brilliantly but your washer pump packed up in the summer! It was stuck up inside with the sugar and acid. It made screens crystal clear though.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
handlamp
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Posted - 27/10/2004 : 14:54
The winter of 1946/47 was certainly severe and the Settle-Carlisle line was blocked from early February, normal working not being resumed until well into April. On Sunday, 3rd February a slight fall of snow had been reported in the area and further falls in the night caused to get into trouble at Ribblehead. After considerable difficulty this was eventually freed by ploughs and, as conditions were further deteriorating, all traffic was diverted via Clapham and Low Gill and the line handed over for ploughing etc.. At one stage over 500 men were engaged in snow clearance south of Dent. In addition to Engineer's staff, the Army and prisoners of war were used in an attempt to clear the line. Army personnel were conveyed in a special train from Otley and another special train was used to convey the POWs from their camp at Skipton leaving around 6am and returning after 5pm each day. It became a regular occurrence for the snow clearers to arrive on site to find that all their previous day's work had been filled in again by the, so called, Helm Wind overnight. At one stage a jet engine was obtained from Rolls Royce at Barlick and put on a flat wagon but this proved to be ineffective due to the hard packed state of the snow. One ruse of the prisoners was to claim that they had lost their shovels and it became a regular feature to provide up to 100 replacements of these implements each day. Bob Lemmon (then Relief SM based at Skipton and a few years later to become SM?GA at Earby) spent most of his time that winter on site as Inspector i/c emergency train movements etc. on the blocked lines.
MORE TO FOLLOW
Edited by - handlamp on 28 Oct 2004 19:20:24
Ted |
Marcia
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Posted - 27/10/2004 : 15:14
My Dad talks about the '47 winter a lot. He was very young and they couldn't go to school for a while due to the drifts up near Edlington where he lived. They went sledging instead!
It's one of those oral family history events :) I've never heard my Mum talk about it though - she always tells me about rationing and hiding under the stairs during air raids!
- Marcia Allass
(http://www.sequentialtart.com) |
handlamp
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Posted - 27/10/2004 : 15:34
To continue-
All the villages and settlements between Settle and Blea Moor were dependant on supplies of animal and human foodstuffs by rail, mainly from Skipton. I was one of the two clerks in the Parcels Office then. Daily supplies of bread were baked by G.E. Carr's bakery, over 1000 loaves for the village of Horton in Ribblesdale being distributed by the SM. Although there were problems, the main line south of Hellifield, and the Ilkley, Colne and Morecambe lines remained in use, often the only mode of transport available, until 28th February. The Craven area suffered blizzard conditions from about noon on that day and by early evening deep drifts were forming in the station approach. All lines out of Skipton wre in trouble and road transport had been brought to a stand. My colleague, Fred Calvert, in the Passimeter (booking office) suggested I should board the 6/51pm rather than wait for the 10/15pm to Earby. That train was worked by a Midland Compound which went at a rare old rate, with what I always considered was the reassuring sound of compounding, to Elslack. Afyter leaving Elslack progress was impeded by drifts and we were eventually brought to a stand in the cutting just beyond Thornton Station from where Eric Grisdale (son of the Earby SM, then Relief Clerk stationed at Colne)and I led a small band of `local passengers' through the drifts, leaving the railway at the Gatehouse Crossing. The following day it was not possible to get to Skipton via road or rail.
Edited by - handlamp on 28 Oct 2004 19:22:10
Ted |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 27/10/2004 : 16:24
Ted has reminded me of a couple of things. I remember seeing a snowplough once, I can't remember where, and what surprised me was that it was made of wood and curved like the prow of a boat but upside down. It was beautifully made and I remember being intrigued by it at the time.
The other memory was raised by Ted's comment about the sound of a compounded engine. When I was trainspotting in the late 1940s we could recognise the locos before we saw them by the exhaust note. Remember the Caprotti valves Ted? They sounded completely different. I know it's sad but I still have a record called 'Steam over Shap' and it's nothing but recordings of locos on the main line over Shap Fell. I'm sorry to say that as far as I'm concerned it's magic! I shall play the tape now while I think of it.......
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
handlamp
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Posted - 28/10/2004 : 19:26
Caprotti valves were indeed a sound of their own, but it must have been the Yorkshireman in me when I could HEAR the economy taking place and emiting such a purposeful noise which made me like them so much
Ted |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 29/10/2004 : 10:29
I was once told that whilst the Caprotti gear was very efficient it was so complicated that the maintenance costs and training problems killed it in the end. Perhaps they could already see diesel on the horizon.
Newton once showed me a trick he had learned from Harry Crabtree and I used it on the Whitelees when I was rebuilding it. In Newton's case it was finding the port measurements in a piston valve housing, in mine it was a similar thing but on a big circular slide valve. The solution was a stick with a nail driven in it, you felt up the bore for the port edges and put pencil register marks on the stick at the casting face. It worked like magic. He also told me that Harry said that after some accidents on the footplate with blown steam packings the railways did away with them and simply used ground mated surfaces with sealing compund painted on. I think they used red lead. Do you know anything about this Ted?
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
handlamp
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Posted - 30/10/2004 : 12:07
No I never heard that one, although,of course, I heard of accidents (fortunately mainly minor)from blown steam packings. I certainly saw a few ?red lead on joints, probably on ageing Austeritys and on, I think, Class 9s.
Ted |
HerbSG
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Posted - 25/12/2008 : 13:52
To this day my memories the 47 winter (age 7) are still fairly vivid and I would be hard pressed to say that even with over 50 years in Canada that I have seen a worse winter. Our winters may be more severe but the "system" handles them fairly efficiently. One of the worst memories would be lunches at the Church ( Cof E) school, first experience with powdered potato, still won't eat that to this day.
HERB
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 26/12/2008 : 06:24
As I said before, I have no memory of the 47 winter....... Must have erased it!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Tizer
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Posted - 26/12/2008 : 10:24
I was born in Blackburn Royal Infirmary in the winter of '47. There were no buses running of course and my Dad had to walk from one side of Blackburn to the other to visit my Mum in the Infirmary. Snow drifts were up to over head height and people had cut narrow gaps through them, so that he walked much of the way there through narrow cuttings, unable to see anything around him but the walls of snow. If someone came the other way you had to be friendly and squeeze past each other. When my Mum brought me home the local coalman sneaked extra coal to us. My Mum was born and brought up in South Africa and she met and married my dad there in the war, coming here in late 1946. Just imagine how she must have felt, having a baby in the winter of 47 in Blackburn after having recently come from the Mediterranean climate of South Africa!
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THE SNOW OF FOURTY-SEVEN
