Today we are still inconvenienced by snow and bad weather, but we generally have reliable cars and warm houses – and we are not so totally reliant on mail. A few days after this story was published there was even an avalanche at Lewes in Sussex.
“It is 23 years since there was any thing like the downfall of snow with which this part of England has been visited in the present week. The effect has been to prevent all travelling; and even persons who happened to be from home on business, found for a day or two that it was impossible to quit the places where they were overtaken by the storm, although the distance which they had to go to their families was only three or four miles: such was actually the case with several persons who were in Stamford on Sunday and Monday: even on foot, and with the utmost contrivance and knowledge of roads, in some dirctions it was impossible to make way from town to town. – The firt sign of the great extent and inconvenince of the downfall was perceived at Stamford on Sunday night, when the mail from Melton Mowbray did not arrive as usual; it left Stamford that morning, but it did not return from Melton, nor has any mail been dispatched hence in that direction since Sunday. On Monday morning there was neither Edinburgh nor Glasgow mail from London: after being greatly delayed in the South, they finally stuck fast between Wansford and Thornhaugh, six miles from Stamford; and it was not until one o’clock on Tuesday afternoon that the guards of the coaches which should have reached us at half-past 5 o’clock on Monday morning were able to come to Stamford on horseback through the snow. The coaches still remained embedded in the drifted mass which covered the road to a depth of six or eight feet near Wansford. The mails from the North were set fast at Colsterworth and at Horn-lane, where they also continued for many hours; but the guards, on horseback, reached Stamford on Tuesday at nearly the same time as those from the South, and they proceeded in the same way on their respective routes with the mail-bags. The mail coach from Edinburgh which should have been here on Monday night, was dragged into Stamford on Tuesday afternoon by eight waggon horses, and stopped here. The business of the posts on the Great North Road could be transacted only on horseback, and in this way for three days we have received the mail-bags: but the bags themselves in general contained little, showing that the interruption on the roads was almost general, and that there was no communication whatever between Lincolnshire and the great road at Stilton. We learned, indeed, to our great concern, that the Lincoln and Hull, and the Boston and Louth lines of the road, were alike impassable on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and that the post communication by them was suspended.
The interruption which the mail-coaches experienced, was of course common to all other coaches. For three days no conveyances were sent out from Stamford for Cambridge, Leicester, or Boston, as none arrived from those quarters.
The situation of the passengers by some of the coaches which were set fast in the snow, was most trying and singular. When, after a tedious journey, one poor fellow who had been outside the Glasgow mail for two days and nights, found the coach come to a dead stand near Horn-lane, six miles North of Stamford, he got into the vehicle and slept soundly for five hours, until the snow could be dug away and a team of waggon horses arrived to extricate the coach. The whole company of one coach, set fast between Wansford and Stilton, found an asylum at Mr. Simpson’s at Morborne, where they were received with all the kind-hearted hospitality for which the late coach-owner and landlord of the George and Angel at Stamford is so well known.
About 50 extra labourers have been employed for four days in clearing the hill at Casterton, and many at Horn-lane, Whittering and Wansford at an expenditure of 25l. to 30l. per day, by Mr. Haycock, the surveyor of the turnpikes.”
The Stamford Mercury, 30th December, 1836.