A VICIOUS winter: Historian Roger Bingham looks back on the cold spell of 70 years ago which Roger, who was four at the time, can just remember!

THE winter of 1946/47 was long remembered as the worst ever.

Though colder temperatures were recorded in 2010, it is still believed to have been the snowiest winter in 300 years.

Just over the North Westmorland border in Teasdale, the heaviest-ever English snow depth of 83 inches was recorded.

Nearby in the Howgills, the Sedbergh bus, fortunately abandoned by its passengers, was 'lost' for weeks on end.

On Shap Fell the A6 was repeatedly blocked - once for six days, so that jettisoned lorries jammed all roads around Kendal.

To supplement local labour, German prisoners of war from Bela Camp, Beetham, were brought in to reopen the main roads. Instead of haphazardly hurling themselves at the drifts, a Gazette photograph showed how the POWs had marked out oblong sections for 'methodical clearing'.

Equally inventive ad hoc hockey teams, unhindered by later health and safety regulations, cleared snow to make ice-rinks on frozen Windermere.

Down at Heversham, the Grammar School's borders built an igloo.

Otherwise, all day schools were closed for three weeks, though the 11+ exam went ahead. But when my school at Leasgill reopened, the headmistress, Miss Wright, noted 'temperatures of 38 degrees in the infants' room. Desks were brought close to the coke and wood fires and, as it was too cold to write, there were singing and dancing lessons.

Nearby, on the Kent Estuary peat mosses, 1,000 blocks were selling for £8 and the first prize at Levens Women's Institute was a load of firewood.

Because of petrol rationing there were few private cars, so with bus and train services at a standstill, people could not get to work and consequently industry, faced also with power shortages, closed down.

One thousand workers were laid off at K Shoes in Kendal, '69 men were out' at Holme Mills and 50 newly unemployed workers were registered at Milnthorpe.

Above all, everyone was cold and hungry. Households, already lacking coal, had their electricity cut off from 9am-11.30am, and from 2pm-4.30pm; food supplies were stingier than in wartime, as bread and potatoes were now, also, rationed.

Moreover, there was little prospect of spring lamb, as a third of Lakeland's sheep had perished in the vicious winter.