The Weather Men

The Weather Men

Our alarm at the series of droughts and winter storms across Great Britain in the twenty first century may cause us to think this is a new concern. But the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century saw similar concerns about extreme weather patterns.

Over 150 years ago, the British Rainfall Organisation was formed with public subscription support to track weather patterns. From 1860 onwards it published the annual British Rainfall Report on the Distribution of Rain. This originally tracked the annual rainfall from 168 locations in England and Wales.

British Rainfall Organisation 1908 Rainfall map.

The importance of adequate water supplies for the growing population in expanding towns and cities was the main reason behind collecting the data. A voluntary network of observers was formed to collect the rainfall readings, and these readings were then compiled on a national basis. Many observers were local clergyman, country gentlemen and civil engineers.

No computer software was available so two ‘computers’ (the job title given to two of the organisation’s staff) crunched the numbers. By 1899, the readings came from over 3,000 land stations which were manned by a similar number of volunteer observers. During the twentieth century, five of them were from St Ives. Read on to learn about the work of Harold Warren, Dr Reginald Grove, E. G. Parsons, Henry Bell and Frederick Norris, authored by Peter Flower, Reginald Grove's grandson.

Harold Warren
Harold was one of Frederick Warren’s two sons and The Priory, Priory Road, St Ives was their family home. Frederick ran the Coote and Warren coal business and was Mayor of St Ives on three occasions. He was a patient of Dr Reginald Grove who attended him during his last illness and conducted the postmortem after he died from a heart attack in 1898 after coming back from a day’s shooting.

Harold qualified as a Civil and Electrical Engineer in 1897 when he was twenty-six. He was living at The Priory when he became extremely interested in the work of the British Rainfall Organisation.

Realising the need to expand the number of weather stations, in 1901, with great energy and enthusiasm he set up eight new ones: at the Workhouse in Royston, Wimpole Hall, Granchester Mill, the Cambridge Botanical Gardens, Quy Hall, Wisbech, Mepal in Cambridgeshire, and Catworth in Huntingdonshire. Using his networking skills, the following year he set up more stations at Bourn Lodge, Newmarket, Lolworth, Burwell and in Cambridgeshire.

One of the weather stations was in the garden of Reginald Grove’s surgery at Slepe House in Cromwell Place. That year the annual rainfall in St Ives was recorded as 17.71 inches with rain falling on 156 days. Slepe House became one of nine weather stations in Huntingdonshire that year.

In 1903 Harold set up a further five stations, at St Neots and Hemingford Grey in Huntingdonshire, and Conington, Streatham, and Chatteris in Cambridgeshire. In 1904 another followed in Huntingdon itself. It's not clear why he did not set one up at his home in The Priory.

Harold recruited his own volunteers and for four years collated their data, which he sent into the organisation by post each week. Over four years he had set up 20 stations and in the British Rainfall Report of 1905 he was thanked for his work; but as he was leaving Cambridge at the end of the year he was unable to continue the preparation of the monthly 'Cambs and Hunts Rainfall Table', and as no local successor was forthcoming the names of each observer would be listed instead. A change of job had taken Harold to live in Dunstable in Bedfordshire and his involvement in recording rainfall ended.

Dr Reginald Grove

Reginald’s interest stemmed from being St Ives’ Medical Officer of Health with a professional concern for the ready supply of water for drinking and sanitary purposes. It is likely that Reginald got his gardener to take the readings each morning.

Like other observers Reginald used a 5-inch diameter rain gauge called a Casella Snowdon Rain Gauge. It was made from copper, and was part buried, to avoid the water collected freezing in winter. Twelve inches protruded above ground and the copper was protected by a wooden cylinder; the gauge had a glass bottle inside with a funnel placed in the top to collect the water. Gauges were inspected as often as the number of central staff allowed and a certificate of accuracy issued.

The rules of the organisation were laid down clearly and observers were required to follow them. Here are some listed in the 1905 Annual Report:

• A rain gauge should be placed on a level piece of ground, not upon a slope or a terrace, and certainly not on a wall or roof. It should be at a distance from every object higher than itself and should never be nearer to a wall or house than a distance equal to the height of that object, nor nearer to a growing shrub or tree than a distance equal to twice that height.
  
  
• Care should be taken to keep flowers or vegetables away from the gauge for a distance of at least three feet all round. If a perfectly open site cannot be obtained, shelter is least harmful on the northwest, north and east; but the exposure to south-west and north-east should always be free.
  
  
• The gauge should be planted in the earth and fixed by stakes or placed in a hole which exactly fits it in a block of cement. It should be fixed so firmly that it will neither be blown over nor tilted by the strongest wind, and it is best to be surrounded by short grass.
  
  
• The funnel of a rain gauge should be set exactly level, and at a height of 1-foot above ground.
  
  
• A specific name should be selected by each observer for his weather station.
  
  
• Rainfall should be measured at 9 a.m. daily, and the amount entered against the date of the previous day.

Reginald’s own name appeared on the official records of the British Rainfall Organisation from 1905 onwards, when the Huntingdonshire weather stations had risen to thirteen as shown below, and Harold Warren had passed over the ones he had set up to others to look after.

The Huntingdonshire records were listed in the South Midland Counties Division by the organisation. Reginald’s weather station was officially named as St Ives, (Slepe House) until he moved to his newly built house in Tenterleas nearby in 1937, when the name was changed to St Ives, (Tenterleas). The gauge was put in the garden of the new house overlooking the kitchen.

Rainfall recordings at Tenterleas, St Ives. (Courtesy of University of Reading)

Probably because Harold Warren had set up the Boxworth and Conington Hall stations, in the annual reports they were given the preface St Ives until the end of World War One. This was despite being listed in Cambridgeshire and being nine and a half miles and six miles from St Ives respectively!

Within a few years, Reginald was one of 5000 observers across the British Isles, including Ireland, who reported their findings from about 3,500 weather stations on a weekly basis. By the time of his death, he had faithfully recorded the rainfall in St Ives for 46 years.

The work of the British Rainfall Organisation was taken over by the Meteorological Office in 1919. One change initiated then was recording rainfall in both imperial and metric.

The general annual fall that Reginald recorded averaged 20 to 25 inches a year, but there were some notable highs and lows, with the first in 1903, when 27.55 inches of rain fell over 176 days.

This was followed by a low of only 15.71 inches the following year in 1904, over a period of 134 days. There were only five other weather stations recorded as being drier in the British Rainfall Annual Report as shown below, the worst being in Huntingdon.

St Ives (Slepe House) also merited a special mention for the month of April as shown below, as being one of the twelve driest locations across England and Wales with only 0.56 inches of rain falling.

The drought in Huntingdonshire was part of a prolonged, severe regional and national drought spanning the turn of the 20th century. 1904 was not a standalone drought year but a dry peak within The Long Drought which lasted from 1890-1910. This period was known for clustered dry years which saw low river flows and groundwater levels across the country, which affected water resources. For instance, Reginald noted in his diary during his last term at school at Uppingham, in Rutland, in July 1887 the severity of the drought during that long, hot summer:

Still very hot all day but at night looked like a bit like rain which is sadly wanted: the waterworks here have almost shut up altogether. Other parts of England are also in great drought.

The late Victorian period climate extremes were not dissimilar to those of the early twenty first century. What the newspapers called The Great Storm of 25-26th August in 1912 with half an inch of rain fall across the country, while in Norfolk and Suffolk two inches fell. St Ives lay on the edge of the worst hit area but August had been a wet month with fields and ditches already saturated. After the Great Storm there were newspaper reports of the St Ives Workhouse being flooded and some streets full of sewage which normally was taken directly into the river.

In his report to the St Ives Borough Council the following year as Medical Officer of Health, Reginald said that while 6.94 inches fell during that month the fact that surface wells were being used less and less meant that the flooding affected the general health of the townsfolk little.

Dr Reginald Grove, c1909 aged 40.

The heavy rainfall continued into the new year with more flooding reported in January including a foot of water on the Low Road from St Ives to Fenstanton. Reginald recorded a high of 31 inches for 1912 with rain falling on 178 days. The harvest that summer was particularly hit. In contrast, there was a very dry period from February to July in 1921 nationally, and in London it was the driest year for nearly 150 years. 1921 was considered the most severe drought nationally since 1900.

In St Ives, Reginald recorded a low of 10.73 inches for 1921, when rain fell for only 97 days. The Met Office designated a partial drought, when no rain falls for a period of more than 28 days consecutive days, and St Ives fell into this category. The output from local agriculture was hard hit that year. In 1947, the last recording by Reginald, the annual rainfall was 22.6 inches.

The role of the amateur record keepers fell away gradually after the Second World War.

E G Parsons

E.G. Parsons set up a new station at Hiam Farm in 1923. This farm was leased from Sir Frederick Hiam, of Hiam Estates Ltd who owned much land in East Anglia. He was a World Champion skater as a young man. Parsons submitted records for 3 years, but nothing further is known about him.

Henry Bell

Henry was a Yorkshireman who served as a private in the Royal Fusiliers in the First World War. He moved to St Ives with his wife Dora and young family after he was demobbed. He got a job as a letter press machine minder at Enderby & Co Printers, in the mill built by Potto Brown across the river from 6, The Quay where they lived.

After the Royal British Legion was formed in 1921, Henry became the Secretary of the newly formed branch in St Ives. When he retired at the beginning of the Second World War he became Reginald Grove’s driver, taking him on patient rounds in Reginald’s Rover, registration EW6.

Henry Bell, Reginald Grove & Veronica Jarman (née Grove) c1945.

He also took on the role of recording the daily rainfall. After Reginald died in 1948, Henry carried on with this duty for ten years until 1958, when he stepped down aged 75. At that stage there were ten stations in Huntingdonshire. The next year a new station was set up in Market Hill, St Ives.

From this year onwards, the names of individual observers were not printed in the Annual Report to reduce its size. Who continued the tradition of rainfall recording in St Ives from then is not known. By the time Henry stepped down, Tenterleas was owned by Mary Grove, Reginald Grove’s second daughter, who ran a nursery school from the house. She later became Mayor of St Ives. Henry died aged 83 in 1966.

Fred Norris

Fred was a second cousin of Herbert Norris, who founded the Norris Museum. Fred owned a successful boot and shoe making business in Crown Street, where he lived above the shop with his wife Jesse and their daughter Jesse Freda. Fred retired when he was 70 and bought ’Maristow’, a large, detached house across the river from St Ives, in London Road near the old Workhouse.

Fred began record keeping in 1938. Possibly Reginald Grove, his GP, encouraged him to take it up as a hobby in his retirement. Fred’s granddaughter, Bridget Wallace, now in her nineties, remembers the rain gauge in the garden as a little girl. She lived in the house next door to her grandparents.

Fred Norris and  his rain gauge, 1939. (Courtesy of Bridget Wallace)

Although ‘Maristow’ was only a little more than a mile from Tenterleas as the crow flies, it was in the parish of Hemingford Grey and Fred’s weather station was therefore called Hemingford Grey. Fred and Reginald used to enjoy comparing notes of their results, especially after a heavy thunderstorm.

1958 was the final year that the last unsung volunteer from St Ives recorded rainfall for the national weather pattern in the British Isles. Fred had recorded the rainfall for seventeen years until his death in 1955 at the age of 84, seven years after Reginald Grove died.

Data collection today

Data is obtained from around 260 automatic stations across the United Kingdom in real time, and climate observations are received from around 140 observers at manual climate stations. All climate stations now record daily maximum and minimum air temperature as well as rainfall with readings still taken at 9.00 am (10.00 am in the summer).