The Most British of Traits

by Marion Bance

Oscar Wilde is credited with saying, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative”. He may have been wrong!

We are all affected by the weather, on the simplest of levels, it influences how we live, our health and our moods, the clothes we wear, what we eat and drink and what we talk about!

And talking about the weather is something we do a lot of in the UK; according to research undertaken for British Science Week, discussing the weather is the most stereotypical ‘British’ trait, ahead of drinking tea and queuing.

Like all coastal towns, Brighton has felt nature’s full force; storms, whirlwinds, floods, tidal waves and hurricanes have all played a part in its history and, no doubt, have been the main topic of conversation around the tea table, in the queue for the butchers’ and down the pub for hundreds of years!

Of all Brighton’s stormy weather events, these might be considered amongst the most deserving of discussion:

The week-long hurricane that struck the South of England in November 1703, was described by contemporary diarist John Evelyn, ‘not to be paralleled with anything happening in our age or in any history’. Named ‘The Great Storm’ (naming storms clearly not just a modern trend!) its winds tore across Brighton, sending the roofs of houses flying, ripping the lead from the roof of St Nicholas’, the Parish Church of Brighton, levelling the town windmill, and causing boats and crew to be lost at sea.

In August 1848 Brighton was ‘visited’ by a whirlwind and waterspout. The Spectator Newspaper (12 August 1847) gave a wonderfully dramatic account, ‘after heavy rain, the sea suddenly became agitated…water rose to the skies, in a pipe which whirled rapidly and moved towards the shore, twisting like a huge snake with its head in the clouds. Coming to the shore, it got among the bathing-machines and made them spin, like peas blown about on a slate. It advanced to the racecourse…In an instant everything was carried high into the air; the canvass tents being scattered like flakes of snow. A waggon was overturned, and its horses thrown about…; and a donkey-cart was turned over many times. A young woman was caught up and carried a considerable distance but was tenderly set down without damage: other persons were seriously hurt. Property worth some hundreds of pounds was destroyed.’

Maybe not as rare as a whirlwind, the violent thunderstorm of July 1850 that flooded Pool Valley to a depth of six feet was, nevertheless, just as devastating. For more than an hour torrential rain rushed down the narrow streets of the Old Town causing injury and loss of property. According to The Brighton Herald, ‘The surface water poured into houses through the doors and windows … while the drains beneath burst and shot their contents like a jet into kitchens and cellars.’

Another extraordinary event was the meteotsunami – a tsunami-like tidal wave - that swept over Brighton’s beaches on 20th July 1929. A boatman stationed near the Palace Pier that afternoon told the Sussex Daily News, ‘People sitting in deckchairs at the shingle and sand edge were swamped and found water suddenly up to their waists and gradually creeping higher’. Other contemporary reports describe how heavy-looking clouds covered the sky, then a wave, perhaps as high as 20 feet, raced over the sands, hundreds of people paddling near the pier were swept up the beach, swimmers were tossed around ‘like corks’ and boats capsized. ‘The actual wave was bad enough,’ commented the boatman, ‘but the backwash, which seemed to be boiling, was terrific. The whole beach roared, and this, mingled with the cries of terrified people, was heartrending.’

The sheer power of nature and its destructive impact on both people and property was clear on those occasions when Brighton found itself in the grip of a brutally cold winter: like 1881 when a snowstorm produced drifts up to eight feet and brought Brighton, quite literally, to a standstill. Or 1929 when frosts were so severe that the sea froze, ‘The wash…that broke over the Banjo Groyne and the large groynes at Black Rock froze hard…’ Fountains, boating pools and the lake in Queen’s Park also turned to ice.

But these (and many other memorably cold winters) were not quite as miserable as the winter of 1962-63. Known as ‘The Big Freeze’, this was one of the coldest winters on record with temperatures dropping to minus 17 degrees celsius and remaining below freezing for 27 days. A fierce ice blast struck Brighton bringing snow drifts that blocked all routes in and out of the town – The Argus reported that Brighton had become an ‘island in the snow’. Amenities ground to a halt; residents had to queue in toe-numbing, blizzard-like conditions to get water, fuel shortages and power-cuts were commonplace - at one-point candles were used to light wards in the Royal Sussex County Hospital – and the ground was so hard the dead could not be buried.

The next big weather event to hit the UK came from an extremely powerful extra-tropical cyclone. In the middle of the night of 15-16 October 1987, seemingly without warning (or perhaps just not forecast by the weathermen) hurricane-force winds swept across the UK. The South Coast caught the brunt of the storm, with the highest UK gusts of 115mph being recorded in Shoreham at 3.10 a.m. Across Brighton winds of more than 100mph caused enormous structural damage, including to the Royal Pavilion, and more than 2,500 trees, particularly in the city’s parks, were uprooted. What happened that night changed the landscape of Brighton forever and will stay in our collective memories and conversations for many years to come.

Talking about the weather may be considered a cultural peculiarity, a foible even, but not unimaginative surely! And, given the heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods that have occurred around the world in recent times, plus what the scientists say about these extreme weather events becoming more frequent and intense, it would feel rather bizarre if we didn’t talk about it!