THIS week's picture from the past gives us a glimpse of the winter of 45 years ago. The year is 1963 and here, delivering the mail on the top road to the Alma Inn, Laneshaw Bridge, is the postman of the day.
Captured on camera by his colleague of many years, photographer of great note Fred Whitaker, is the one and only Rennie Earnshaw of Mabel Street, Colne.
Rennie was, along with Fred, a true character at the Royal Mail Sorting Office in Colne and delivered the Black Lane Ends rural post on foot for two decades. Note, Rennie is eating one of his famous cheese and brown sauce (HP only) butties as he stands by a lorry which has clearly become stuck fast in the deep snow!
The winter of 1963 was one of the worst of the 20th Century and Fred took around 20 pictures of his postal colleagues on their rounds that year, including one of Rennie with snow up to his chest as he ensures "the mail must get through", as he proudly delivered to his farmer friends in
snow that stayed for six weeks.
Jack Priestley, another marvellous character, worked 50 years (1932 to 1982) at the Colne office and always said that the worst winters were 1947 and 1963. Jack was on the Trawden rural round in 1947 and in places, the snow was eight feet deep as he went slowly from farm to farm. The snow began to fall again as Jack landed at William Berry's Parson Lee Farm, and as he enjoyed a respite from the cold and terrible conditions with a hot brew, the snowdrifts outside the farmhouse reached higher and higher. Jack that day, the worst he'd known, landed back at the office at the ungodly hour of 10-20 p.m with every single letter and packet delivered.
The last truly bad winter locally was in 1981 and a snow-bound December day when my delivery took me down a six-foot deep Barrowford Road and saw me arrive back soaked to the skin by the snowdrifts at 6-15 p.m!
