“Monday. Here’s a day! – The Ground covered with snow! What is to become of us? – We were to have walked out early to near Shops, & had the Carriage for the more distant. – Mr. Richard Snow is dreadfuly fond of us. I dare say he has stretched himself out at Chawton too.”
– Jane Austen, writing to Cassandra from London, March 7, 1814
The print is from the British Museum of a hand-colored woodcut dated to February 14, 1814, showing the Frost Fair held when the Thames froze between London Bridge and Blackfriars, off Three Cranes Wharf. From February 1st to the 5th or 6th when the ice began to break up, the Thames froze hard enough to support games, rides, stalls, vendors, and even temporary print shops. When the freeze ended, it did so fast, and some drowned as they fell into the waters. Ice damaged ships along the docks.
The Thames was frozen solid from January 31st to February 7th, and a frost fair was held on the river. (The Mersey and the Severn also froze, with staking and horses being ridden over the river reported at Bristol.) Heavy fog also was reported from December 26th to January 3rd with the Maidenhead coach reported as being lost on December 28th and most other traffic at a standstill, and then heavy snow set in. However, the winter of 1813/14 was not the only one to offer chilling cold, which could last well into spring.
During the 1700s, and throughout the Regency years, winters meant snow, fog, ice and sometimes freezing rains and floods. These harsh winters are now attributed to ‘The Little Ice Age’, a phrase first used by geologist François Matthes in 1939 to account for the exceptional cold that began in the 1300s and continued through the 1800s. NASA’s Earth Observatory marked three particularly cold intervals, with periods of warming between: 1650, 1770, and 1850. No exact cause is known, but possibilities include a decrease in human population due to plagues, wars and famine, ocean circulation changes, variations in the Earth’s tilt, and heightened volcanic activity.
Winter temperatures, with the cold hitting early or staying late, led to crop failures, the death of livestock, and frozen rivers not just in England but across Europe. Bad harvests and rising food prices are now linked to the social unrest of that era. Such cold in London led to more fires in hearths, and with the switch from burning wood to coal, which had begun in the 1500s, London’s fogs became known for their thickness and cold.
In An American in Regency England, Louis Simonds wrote on March 5, 1810, “It is difficult to form an idea of the kind of winter days in London, the smoke of fossil coals forms an atmosphere, perceivable for many miles, like a great round cloud attached to the earth. In the town itself, where the weather is cloudy and foggy, which is frequently the case in winter, this smoke increases the general dingy hue, and terminates the length of every street with a thick grey mist, receding as you advance.”
Perhaps the most famous volcanic impact was the eruption on April 10, 1815 of Mount Tambora (also spelled Tomboro), an island in what was then the Dutch East Indies. The ash spread globally over the next three years, and led to 1816 being called the ‘Year Without a Summer’ with reports of heavy snow on April 14th and May 12th. But that was not the only very cold winter.
The eruption of Laki, a volcano in Iceland from June 1783 to February 1784 had also led to reports in England and across Europe of a haze in the air, damage to crops, and deaths most likely due to high levels of sulphates. Bad winters hit England in 1794/95, with frosts that lasted until late March, and the most intense cold hitting in January. Heavy rain that began on February 7 that led to flooding in many parts of England. In Scotland, it was the seventh coldest winter at Edinburgh, with heavy snowfall across Scotland. Inn England, major rivers froze and snow made roads impassable. The winter of 1779/80 offered another sever winter in London and the south of England.
After several warm summers and less cold winters, England’s weather turned bad from 1807 through 1819. It was reported as often being wet in London, with eight very wet years, including in 1816 to 1821. The severe winters include the Regency years of 1813/14, 1815/16 and 1819/20. In the latter two winters, ice was reported on the Thames, but was not thick enough to walk on.
In 1807 London, daily fog was reported from December 17th to the 21st. In January 1808, bad weather led to flooding in the East Anglian marshes, with farming losses due to breaches in sea walls. February 1808 had snowstorms and frosts in the England fens. January of 1810 had ten straight days of fog.
The winter of 1815/16 was reported as even colder than in 1814, with snow reported to have fallen on Easter Sunday, the 14th of April, and then again on May 12th. Weather reports held 1819 as both a cold and wet year, and January 1820 was ranked as just outside of the list of the twenty coldest winters. On January 29, 1820, King George III died in his padded rooms at Windsor Castle, bringing the Regency years in England to a close.
For more reading:
https://www.pascalbonenfant.com/18c/geography/weather.html
https://premium.weatherweb.net/weather-in-history-1800-to-1849-ad/
https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/frozen-little-ice-age-britain-thames-freeze-when/
https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/snow-in-the-regency/
https://www.quillsandquartos.com/post/snowed-in-regency-style
https://shannondonnelly.com/2020/12/19/regency-england-winter-fare/
Article by Shannon Donnelly for The Quizzing Glass blog and The Regency Reader.
Thanks to Shannon for mentioning An American in Regency England. The hero from my current WIP is an American investing in the Erie Canal who has come to England to learn from them about canal building. I have been reading The Diary of James Gallatin to get an American perspective on England and Europe, but this will be so helpful. Cynthia Johnson aka Evelyn Richardson
I’m bookmarking this for future reference! Great article!