WE have known the occasional harsh winter in recent years but nothing compares to the Big Freeze of 1962-63.

Most of the country was coated in a seemingly permanent thick white blanket and rural communities were completely cut off. It was the worst winter for 82 years.

The first snow fell in the Bournemouth area on Boxing Day 1962 and heavy falls continued, turning into thick ice. With strong winds bringing even more snow of depths of 10ft or more in drifts, the bad weather continued into January and February. The snow remained well into March.

The snow created disruption for many, as trains and buses arrived late or had to be cancelled altogether and the AA was inundated with calls from motorists who had to abandon their cars.

Bournemouth and District Water Company received more than 200 calls from customers complaining of burst water pipes, The hardest hit were those returning from the Christmas break to find ceilings down and furniture ruined because of the bursts.

Council workers worked round the clock with the addition of snow ploughs, mechanical grabs and refuse vehicles, clearing and gritting the main roads, only to be brought out again when more snow fell.

Lorries had difficulty collecting milk from farms as countryside roads were blocked and queues formed outside dairies and shops when the milk was delivered. Then there was a problem of a chronic shortage of empty bottles. A Hants and Dorset bus going from Shaftesbury to Bournemouth got stuck in a snowdrift on Melbury Abbas Hill.

“The snow was very thick so we could not move,” said Paul Stephens who was the conductor on the bus.

“People came out with shovels to dig us out. My driver, Bill Trickett, and I grabbed our company shovels and dug like mad.

“It took us an hour and a half extra on the journey back to Bournemouth because of the very bad snowy conditions everywhere”.

Walt Loveridge, a Hants and Dorset mechanic, also helped dig the bus out of the snow.

At Compton Abbas, 25 people had to be rescued from two snow-bound double-deckers, spending the night at the nearby Crown Inn at Tarrant Hinton. The prompt action of police and a Bournemouth bus driver got a woman safely to the Firs Maternity Home in Trinity Road, shortly before her baby was born, after the ambulance she was travelling in got stuck in a snowdrift.

At Christchurch, boats were frozen into the River Stour.

“The ice was thick enough for us to walk on from Iford Bridge to the entrance of the harbour and back”, said Ken Adams, whose boys Geoffrey and Richard made the most of it.