I did a series of three blog posts in December 2010 which covered harsh winters in Broadland over the years, beginning with a post on the Big Freeze of winter 1963. The recent cold snap and accompanying snow in Norfolk has prompted me to dig out another photograph from the archives.
Ice floes at Great Yarmouth 1963
The image on the right also dates from 1963 and shows the ice floes at Great Yarmouth in the January of that year. It looks as though it was taken from Haven Bridge and shows the view looking across to North Quay and up towards Breydon Water. The white building on the right was the old Steward & Patteson Brewery off licence and wine stores – the site is now occupied by the Havenbridge House office block. As previously mentioned, the extremely low temperatures caused the rivers and broads to completely freeze over, but up and down the eastern coast of Britain there were reports of the sea itself freezing too. At Herne Bay in Kent the ice apparently stretched for a mile offshore!
I’ve still not seen many photographs of Broadland during the winters of 1947 and 1963 – were you there and did you record the event on camera? If so, or you have any memories of the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads during those winters, then I’d love to hear from you.
