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Topic: River Thames frost fairs

	Across River Thames (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
		Thames River (Connecticut) - The Thames River is a short river and tidal estuary in the U.S. Thames River - The Thames River is the name of a river in Ontario, Canada and one in Connecticut, United States of America.
		Wye River - Wye River River Wye, Derbyshire - The River Wye is a river in Derbyshire, England.
		North River (Cacapon River tributary) - North River is a tributary of the Cacapon River, belonging to the Potomac...
	lo63.muscyberspace.com /acrossriverthames.html (874 words)

	River Thames frost fairs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The Frost Fair of 1814 by Luke Clenell.
		Henry VIII is said to have traveled all the way from central London to Greenwich by sleigh along the river during the winter of 1536 and Elizabeth I took walks on the ice during the winter of 1564.
		However the Thames frost fairs were often brief, scarcely commenced before the weather lifted and the people had to retreat from the melting ice.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs (689 words)

	BBC - Weather Centre - Features - History and Religion - Winter Fun in the Middle of the Thames
		Although the Thames was always prone to freezing, the frost fairs did not actually start until the winter of 1564.
		However, frost fairs did not reach their peak until the eighteenth century, and the last frost fair in 1813 lasted for a month.
		In one particular frost fair on the Thames, a large ox was roasted whole upon the ice; and at another time a side show consisted of the roasting of a sheep over a massive charcoal fire in the middle of the river.
	www.bbc.co.uk /weather/features/frost_fairs.shtml (471 words)

	River Thames and boaty things
		One of the worst floods on the non-tidal Thames in recent history, occurred in 1894 and was due to exceptionally heavy rainfall - during the 26 days prior to its peak, over 200 mm (8 inches) of rain fell which was equal to one third of the total annual rainfall for the area.
		During the frost of 1891 when the river froze over in Oxford, the ice was so thick that it was possible for a coach and four horses to drive across it.
		However, as the tidal Thames is so irregular, with 25 sharp bends between Teddington and the sea, the fresh and sea waters become thoroughly mixed and at slack water there is little difference between the salinity of the water at the surface and that near the bed.
	www.the-river-thames.co.uk /weather.htm (2463 words)

	River Thames (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
		The North and South branches on the upper part of the river flows through a shallow plain of sand and clay, with an average depth of 23 meters.
		Monk witnesses a couple plummet from a bridge into the river; his attempt to determine whether the deaths were accident, suicide, or murder uncovers a link to the river`s wildlife and its ecological issues.
		The river was renamed after the river thames - Richard Digance Bitter Green - The Johnstons Mr.
	ri92.muscyberspace.com /riverthames.html (773 words)

	River Wey & Navigations : The Thames
		The Thames is significant to the Wey Valley in that both Navigations were dependent upon the Thames for generating much of the river borne cargos that made them financially viable, and of course the Wey has its confluence with the Thames as a major tributary near Weybridge.
		The Thames has a total of 44 locks straddling the non-tidal section of the river, the furthest upstream being St John’s Lock at Lechdale in Gloucestershire which provides the beginning of the navigational drop from 234 ft (72 m) until the tidal stretch is marked by the last lock at Teddington in Middlesex.
		The frost fairs held during the 17th and 18th centuries have sadly long since sunk without trace, no doubt another victim of global warming, as these highly popular and colourful affairs were held on the frozen winter waters of the river itself.
	www.weyriver.co.uk /theriver/thames.htm (1806 words)

	River Thames - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The river itself rises in Gloucestershire, traditionally forming the county boundary, firstly between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, between Berkshire on the south bank and Oxfordshire on the north, between Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, between Berkshire and Surrey, between Surrey and Middlesex and between Essex and Kent.
		The serenity of the contemporary Thames is contrasted with the savagery of the Congo River, and with the wilderness of the Thames as it would have appeared to a Roman soldier posted to Britannia two thousand years before.
		The Thames is the historic heartland of rowing in the United Kingdom.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Thames (2873 words)

	BBC - h2g2 - Frost Fairs, London, UK
		Prior to the outbreak of bridge-building that occurred in the 19th Century, it was not uncommon for the River Thames to freeze over.
		The second similar fair was in 1608 and is depicted in the novel Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
		A week after the river had frozen, three people had to be rescued from a large piece of ice that had broken away and by the next day the rise in temperature was indicated by a shower of sleet.
	www.bbc.co.uk /dna/h2g2/A970733 (1114 words)

	Frost fairs
		Frost fairs, as they were known, were quite common between the 1500s and the early 19th century and featured such delights as ox-roasting barbecues, stalls, games and performing animals.
		The frost fairs of the Thames in London (all taking place upstream from the Old London Bridge) are perhaps the best documented and there are a great many artists impressions of them in circulation.
		Frost fairs were essentially a medieval form of entertainment and their occurance could never be predicted.
	www.thegalloper.com /backstories/0203frost.html (505 words)

	River Thames
		It is England's longest river and the second longest river in the United Kingdom.
		The River Thames rises in the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, and flows roughly eastwards passed Oxford (where it is known as the River Isis), until the Chilterns and on through London to the North Sea.
		In the 16th century, Henry VIII is said to have traveled all the way from central London to Greenwich by sleigh along the river during the winter of 1536 and Elizabeth I took walks on the ice during the winter of 1564.
	www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk /customs/questions/london/thames.htm (563 words)

	The River Thames Guide - About the Thames - The Thames is Liquid History
		From Lechlade to Eynsford the river is full of such unexpected sights and delights, like kingfishers and otters, or families of ducks having their first swimming lesson across the river, or the sight of cows standing in the river water, their tails gently swishing away.
		The Thames is of course a lowland river — its landscape is gentle and the surrounding flood plains contain a diversity of woodlands, water meadows and grassland, together with vast areas of salt marsh in the Thames estuary.
		The main wildlife habitats are in the river itself, on the riverbank, and on the flood plain.
	www.riverthames.co.uk /about_thames/3274.htm (6069 words)

	Londonist: Frost Fair, 15 December to !7 December
		Frost Fairs along the river were the big winter event up until the widening of the Thames in 1815 which ended the annual big freeze.
		We're glad to announce that the Frost Fair came back to London (minus the frozen Thames) in 2003, with thousands of people heading to the riverside walk outside Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe for the 21st century version of this event, and this year's Frost Fair is bigger than ever.
		During Saturday and Sunday, the Frost Fair has a winter market, live entertainment, guided tours of Bankside and a range of workshops for adults and children all held in traditional Mongolian yurts ranging from Christmas wreath-making to kick boxing and lantern workshops to ice-sculpting.
	www.londonist.com /archives/2006/12/frost_fair_15_d.php (504 words)

	The Thames
		The Thames is not one of the world’s longest rivers – it is a mere 346 kilometres in length (215 miles) – but it is one of the most famous, and it is the longest and most important waterway in England.
		Traffic on the river was very heavy – fish were landed and sold at Billingsgate and colliers docked at the wharf or the Coal Exchange nearby (in summer there could be up to 700 colliers alone waiting to discharge their cargo).
		In the 17th and 18th century, during winter freezes, a rare treat was the Frost Fairs, held on the river with ox roasting barbecues, stalls, fairground amusements and performing animals.
	www.jasa.net.au /london/thames.htm (1604 words)

	1814 Frost Fair (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
		It was an exceptional winter that caused ‘Old Father Thames’ to freeze solidly enough for people to walk across - rather than pay a boatman or the toll on the bridge - but the holding of fairs on such occasions had a long history.
		Tthe streets were piled high with snow, the ice on the river dirty and "lumpy" but firm enough on the 30th for seventy people to walk across from Queenhithe to the opposite bank.
		The Thames watermen, far from being ruined made a huge profit by charging a toll of twopence or threepence to enter ‘Frost Fair;’ - and demanding a tip on leaving.
	www.lupton2.freeserve.co.uk /history/frostfair.htm (761 words)

	[No title]
		This meant that the Thames often froze over in winter and it was possible to walk (or skate) from one side to the other.
		Huge "frost fairs" were organised and people played games, went to meetings and even camped out on the frozen river.
		In Victorian Times, the smell coming off the river was so powerful that the Houses of Commons, which backs straight on to the Thames, had to put up curtains soaked in chloride of lime at the windows to keep the smell out.
	britcult0.tripod.com /geography/thames/thames.htm (901 words)

	Sample Document
		At the first real fair, in 1683 called the "Blanket Fair" because tents were made of bedclothes the "Merry Monarch", Charles II, hunted a fox on the river.
		It was only in the 18th century that frost fairs reached their zenith, when a comprehensive range of public amusements of a kind which was simultaneously being developed at water pageants, London pleasure gardens and fairs on terra firma was applied to the frozen river.
		The river remained largely frozen until the night of February 17, 1740, when the ice was rent into enormous masses, and drifted with the falling stream.
	openaccess.dialog.com /gov/samples/NewsUK.html (796 words)

	Frost Fairs on the River Thames (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
		The river itself was wider and the bridges, particularly London Bridge, stood on much larger pillars and narrower arches, so restricting the flow of water, making it easier for ice to form.
		The first recorded Frost Fair was held in 1564 and Londoners danced and practised archery on the ice.
		The frost fairs came to an end when the flow of the river was increased by the demolition of the old London Bridge and the opening of the new London Bridge in 1831.
	www.allinfoaboutlondon.com /index.php?page=107 (591 words)

	Lynch, "Pope's Thames"
		The problem is that the Thames of 1713 wasn't particularly poetic, at least in its eastern stretches, and at least in the usual definition of "poetic." Go close enough to the source, and it seems to have been very pleasant indeed.
		As I said, the Thames didn't suddenly get dirty in 1715, but poets of earlier generations could turn away from it: their Thames was a Thames in inverted commas, not a real river.
		Alongside the pastoral Thames, the georgic Thames, the heroic Thames, and the locodescriptive Thames we have the satirical Thames.
	andromeda.rutgers.edu /~jlynch/Papers/popethames.html (4683 words)

	The Thames River Services Website (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10)
		The 19 piers of stone supporting the bridge, restricted the flow of the river so much that in winter it would freeze over and Frost Fairs would be held on the ice.
		Londoners had long used ferrymen to row them across the river, and it was these men that rowed many to safety as their homes went up in smoke.
		By the mid 17th century the river was so crowded with shipping waiting to unload, in many cases up to several weeks, that it was said to be almost possible to walk from shore to shore across the craft.
	www.royalriverthames.co.uk /history1.htm (1318 words)

	Sample Record
		A remarkable fair was established on the ice and was to last for nine weeks.
		City-dwellers were suddenly released from their cramped streets by the frozen river, which created an open vista in the capital.
		An irony of the 1739-40 winter was that, although the fair gave great pleasure, the freeze caused tremendous misery.
	www.dialogselect.com /intranet/samples/NewsUK.html (796 words)

	The River Thames Guide - Reading and Reference Material - Reading and Reference Materials
		It is a poetic celebration of the commercial heritage of the River Thames.
		This is another book which gives you a bird's-eye view of the River Thames from the source to the sea and features some stunning photography from the air.
		Written by Chris Roberts this book tells the story of London's bridges across the River Thames, how and why they were built, incidents that have occurred on them from ghosts to suicides, and lots of other detail you never knew...
	www.riverthames.co.uk /reading/2859.htm (1098 words)

	Frost Fairs on the Frozen Thames
		Frost Fairs took place frequently on the Thames for 600 years.
		This is the first book to look in detail at some of the many pictures of those fairs.
		Feasting and drinking were much in evidence, with oxen being roasted on the ice and the first roundabouts appearing.
	joylandbooks.com /books_new/frostfairs.htm (87 words)

	The Thames
		The rest of the book deals with the three great Frost Fair winters of 1683/4, 1739/40 and 1814, when the Thames froze over and much merry was made.
		The final Frost Fair of 1814 followed one of the worst of the famed fogs, the 'London particulars', at the end of 1813.
		The Thames now flows too fast for frost fairs, because the embankments are smoother, tributaries like the Fleet have been confined to underground culverts, and the space between the spans of the bridges, especially since the demolition of the Old London Bridge, are wider.
	www.fictionalcities.co.uk /thames.htm (647 words)

	Tkachuck, R. D. --- The Little Ice Age
		Frost will occur later in the spring and earlier in the fall causing a shortened growing season.
		It is also interesting to note that in the paintings produced during this time, the percentage of open sky decreases and the cloud cover increases, suggesting that the contemporary artists were inadvertently recording the effects of the Little Ice Age (Lamb 1967).
		An artist's depiction of "Frost Fair or Rural Sports on the River Thames, February 5, 1814." Such frost fairs on the Thames were significant social events during a time of climate cooling known as the Little Ice Age (see pp.
	www.grisda.org /origins/10051.htm (4077 words)

	Frost Fair at Chester Zoo
		Chester Zoo is to host a Winter Wonderland this year with an event modeled on the Frost Fairs of days gone by.
		Frost Fairs were traditionally held on the River Thames and Chester Zoo is bringing in a 20 metre ice rink to replicate those winter celebrations.
		Chester Zoo's Frost Fair is due to kick off on December 1st and will run until February 4th 2007.
	www.familyfun-and-stay.co.uk /news/attractions/chester-frost-fair.html (389 words)

	RealClimate » Little Ice Age ("LIA") Petit Âge Glaciaire
		These include the citation of frost fairs on the River Thames as evidence of extreme cold conditions in England.
		Thames freeze-overs (and sometimes frost fairs) only occurred 22 times between 1408 and 1814 [Lamb, 1977] when the old London Bridge constricted flow through its multiple piers and restricted the tide with a weir.
		It is also sometimes claimed that the extreme cold of the "Little Ice Age" impeded the navigation of a Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic during the early 19th century.
	www.realclimate.org /index.php?p=32 (428 words)

	Panoramic Images of the World: The River Thames - London
		This photo up the River Thames in London is part of one of the panoramic images found on the PanoramicEarth.com Tour of London.
		this river was, for hundreds of year, the lifeline and trade artery of the city.
		On the right is the new GLA Headquarters of the Major of London and moored in the river is the HMS Belfast, a floating museum of a battle ship.
	panoramicearth.blogspot.com /2006/10/river-thames-london.html (625 words)

	London's Frost Fair - Picture - ninemsn Encarta
		From about 1500 to about 1850, the world went through a spell of colder-than-average temperatures.
		This period, known as the “Little Ice Age”, saw the River Thames regularly freeze over in its passage through London.
		On such occasions, fairs were held on the ice, such as the one depicted in this engraving of the “Great Frost” of 1684-1685.
	au.encarta.msn.com /media_461550282/London's_Frost_Fair.html (66 words)

	Frost Fairs
		All the ships in the river, from London Bridge to Limehouse, with the exception of four only, were broken from their moorings and thrown on shore.
		Here it packed, and if the frost continued, formed a thick mass of rough ice which, as more came down extended further and further up stream; and it was on this ice, far more than surface ice, that on three occasions I remember a coach and four was driven from Folly Bridge to Iffley.
		I have always assumed that the relative roughness of the Frost Fair ice was caused by the tide disrupting it as it froze.
	www.thames.me.uk /s00051.htm (3315 words)

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