Christleton in the Snow - 2

In the December 2022 article for Christleton in the Past, I displayed a series of pictures taken around the Village after a good fall of snow. I used to listen to the weather forecast carefully if snow was forecast, and be prepared to walk to the village along the canal from my home in Rowton, to capture the snow scenes in the village, just as the sun was rising. This was an important decision as by the time I had walked along as far as the Quarry or Trooper, I knew that in the centre of the Village and particularly the church and taller buildings would start losing snow from their roofs, or through traffic would break up the surface of the snow, and lose the impact of a carpet of snow over the scene.

In this month’s series I illustrate some of the scenes at the “top” of the village, with the Windmill site on the footpath to Littleton, The Square and the Chapel, Dixon’s Houses, Legion Meadow and delightful snow scenes across farmland. We have lived in the Chester area since the mid 1960’s, and we had many winters with deep falls of snow for the following 30 years. There were several times in these years that schools in the County were closed, although we always managed to keep the Primary school open in Quarry Lane. There were times when there were ski tows, for ski-ing and sledging near the Horseshoe Pass, and the River Dee covered in ice. My perception is that that since the turn of the Millennium we have had much milder winters and less snow. Also the snow has melted relatively quickly, so when we get snowfall it is very memorable. Children’s sledges have since been abandoned to sheds, and rarely see the light of day.

I hope you enjoy these snow scenes through the Village, a reminder of colder winters than we seem to be having during this period which many of us believe is caused by global warming.

Christleton in the Past is a way of me sharing the Christleton Local History Archive with you, illustrating many aspects of Village Life since the advent of photography. We are so fortunate to have such a rich archive illustrating village life, since the 1860’s, and I hope that these will be useful study images for students and villagers alike. There are big gaps in the collection, especially in the period of WWII, and in the 1950’s. We have virtually no photographs of the village at the time of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II for example, so if you have any photographs of this period I would be delighted to hear from you. During the next six months or so I intend publishing photographs of events at the Primary and High Schools, most of which have never been published, except for those in books about the Village.