Jan Griffier  – The Great Frost – 1683

The famous Frost Fair taking place on the frozen River Thames in London in 1683. Freezing to around eleven inches thick, the ice was strong enough to hold shops, stalls, coaches and sleds. The diarist John Evelyn describes bull-baiting, horse-and-coach races, puppet plays and tippling shops. In this painting by Jan Griffier the Elder, Westminster Abbey and Whitehall can be seen on the left and Lambeth Palace on the right. Date: 1683

River Thames frost fairs were held on the tideway of the River Thames at London in some winters between the 17th century and early 19th century, during the period known as the Little Ice Age, when the river froze over. During that time the British winter was more severe than now, and the river was wider and slower, further impeded by the medieval Old London Bridge.

Even at its peak, in the mid-17th century, the Thames freezing at London was less frequent than modern legend sometimes suggests, never exceeding about one year in ten except for four winters between 1649 and 1666. From 1400 to the removal of the now-replaced medieval London Bridge in 1835, there were 24 winters in which the Thames was recorded to have frozen over at London; if “more or less frozen over” years (in parentheses) are included, the number is 26: 1408, 1435, 1506, 1514, 1537, 1565, 1595, 1608, 1621, 1635, 1649, 1655, 1663, 1666, 1677, 1684, 1695, 1709, 1716, 1740, (1768), 1776, (1785), 1788, 1795, and 1814. So, of the 24, the by-century totals are: 15th two, 16th five, 17th ten, 18th six, 19th one. Frost fairs were far more common elsewhere in Europe, for example in the Netherlands. The Thames freezes over more often upstream, beyond the reach of the tide, especially above the weirs, of which Teddington Lock is the lowest. The last great freeze of the higher Thames was in 1962–63.

During the Great Frost of 1683–84, the worst frost recorded in England, the Thames was completely frozen for two months, with the ice reaching a thickness of 11 inches (28 cm) in London. Solid ice was reported extending for miles off the coasts of the southern North Sea (England, France and the Low Countries), causing severe problems for shipping and preventing the use of many harbours. Near Manchester, the ground was frozen to 27 inches (69 cm), in Somerset, to more than 4 feet (1.2 m).

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period. Although it was not a true ice age, the term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939. It has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries, but some experts prefer an alternative timespan from about 1300 to about 1850. Climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of the period, which varied according to local conditions.

The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, all separated by intervals of slight warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report considered the timing and areas affected by the Little Ice Age suggested largely-independent regional climate changes rather than a globally-synchronous increased glaciation. At most, there was modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the period.

Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, variations in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt (orbital forcing), inherent variability in global climate, and decreases in the human population.

Jan Griffier (ca 1652–1718) was a Dutch Golden Age painter who was active in England, where he was admitted to the London Company of Painter-Stainers in 1677.

February 24, 2018 at 12:52PM