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In the memory we always had significantly more snow in the 50s/60s than we do now.
Gritting consisted of a lorry full of grit being driven round the roads with two men in the back with shovels spreading the grit as the lorry crept along. Despite what was frequently quite deep snow I don't recall the school ever being closed (put me right anyone with a better memory), and I only recall two days when the buses were off.
The really bad winters - or 'good winters' if you were a kid (other than '62-'63) - were those immediately after the War, '46 '47 (the very worst/best of them all) and '48. I was still at Eastwood then but can't recall that School closing, though I'd be surprised if it didn't, at least in '47. I remember the milk crates being brought into the classroom with the silver tops suspended about an inch above the bottles on a platform of frozen cream, then being put by the radiators to thaw out before they could be drunk. But my abiding memories of '47 were after school when in our street, down Stockbridge, the snow was so deep we were able to carve out elevated roads and became really quite adept at building igloos. The snow lasted well into March. My most miserable memory of those winters was having to take my sledge down to the gasworks at Marley to buy bags of coke (because of the national coal shortage), and having to run the gauntlet of the bully boys in Worth Village, who were not averse to tippling your bags of coke/and or you all over the road, or even running off with your sledge and your coke... I often think of those winters when I drive past the gasworks on the Worth Valley by-pass road.
I was born 13/3/1947, by emergency caesarian, and they had to get Mum up to the hospital with several feet of snow piled up at each side of the road, so you couldnt see across