The year the creek froze from Brightlingsea to Wivenhoe. [DW]
The frozen River Colne at Wivenhoe, February 1929. The tidal east-coast rivers will freeze during severe winters such as those of 1929, 1940, 1947 and 1962. At first ice forms on the tide's edge, floating off as small floes with the flood, growing larger after a few days and several strandings, filling the river and creeks with floes swirling up and down on the flood and ebb, threatening severe damage to the hulls of wooden vessels and eventually choking the foreshores. Finally, the thaw begins its quick dispersal and brings floods of fresh water ebbing downstream over the salt-water tides.
This photograph, taken from what is now the hard occupied by Wivenhoe Sailing Club, looks upstream towards Rowhedge, with its cornfields still unscarred by sand and ballast excavation and the river wll unspoiled by the present commercial quay. The then-unoccupied Wivenhoe shipyard is at the right of this photograph. [JL]
Plate.68 in SWW.
Used in The Sailor's Coast page 22.
Date: February 1929