It can get hot in Britain. In 1906, 1911, 1955 and – boy – 1976 (‘Save water, bath with a friend’) the heat was unbearable. So terrible is a British heatwave that enduring the scorching sun becomes a sign of indomitable British spirit. Weather that would be routine or simply ‘summer’ in other parts of the world – see newspaper headlines declaring “It’s hotter than Spain / Miami / Hell” -becomes the Great British Heatwave.

These photographs show how Britons coped with heat in the 20th Century.

In The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911, Juliet Nicolson writes:

On 17 July, 1911, most of the country was perspiring in 80F (27C) temperatures. It became too hot to work after midday, so the managers of the cotton mills and stone quarries in Clitheroe, Lancashire, decided to shut down in the middle of the afternoon. To compensate for lost hours, the quarrymen’s day would now begin at first light, 4.30am. The managers were delighted that the Daylight Savings Bill had not yet been made law, so they were able to take advantage of the early dawn. The Times began to run a regular column under the heading “Deaths From Heat”. And the weathermen forecast that temperatures would continue to rise. By 20 July there had been 20 consecutive days without rain, and Richard Stratton, an elderly farmer in Monmouth, reported gathering his earliest harvest since 1865…

In London the sky seemed unusually clear, and in King’s Lynn in Norfolk a temperature of 92F (33C) broke all previous records for that part of the country… In London on the first day of the month the temperature maintained a steady 81F, and just as the dock owners were hoping that the strike action of earlier in the summer was a thing of the past, between four and five thousand men employed in the Victoria and Albert Docks stopped work, and the place was at a standstill… …the temperature recorder at South Kensington registered 92F, and people found themselves crossing over to the shady side of the street. There was still a severe water shortage in pockets of the country, wool workers in Bradford Mills being laid off because there was no water for the night-time cleaning of the wool. On 11 September the average temperature suddenly dropped by 20 degrees and The Times forecast good news: “The condition over the kingdom as a whole is no longer of the fine settled type of last week and the prospects of rain before long appear to be more hopeful for all districts.” The Lady magazine was already devoting several pages to new autumn fashions, and sumptuous furs had arrived on the rails of Peter Robinson’s. The long, hot summer was over.

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