Dunstable Yesteryear: Aftermath of a 1901 blizzard
A blizzard in 1901 left enough snow in High Street North, Dunstable, to allow some children to hitch their sledge to a pair of horses and travel along the road in style.
The scene was sufficiently unusual to be the subject of a photograph taken in the days when a camera was an unusual luxury.
The snapshot was taken by Frederick James Creak who went on to be one of Dunstable’s most prominent citizens. He ran a hat manufacturing company and was made Mayor of the borough in 1923.
Soon after the Dunstable Gazette invested in the technology to allow it to print photographs, he contributed his snow scene to the paper’s 1933 equivalent of Yesteryear. A faded cutting of this has now been enhanced, sharpened and colourised by computer to produce the image here.
The buildings in the background are still readily recognisable, apart from the town hall whose ornate Victorian structure has been replaced by today’s Santander Bank. When the picture was taken the town hall balcony had not yet been added to the frontage above the front entrance. The building on the left became the Crown public house and all the dwellings on the right are also still standing, albeit with very different commercial facades.
Yesteryear is compiled by John Buckledee, chairman of Dunstable and District Local History Society.