The Thames Frost Fair 1683-84 - one of a kind

340 years ago the frozen Thames in London hosted one of the most famous of the Frost Fairs.

The BBC News website has an article about the 1683-84 Frost Fair in London when the Thames froze so solidly that people could not only cross on foot but a sizeable temporary fair developed complete with printing presses.

The article can be seen at The gaiety and grimness of The Great Frost

For all that this was in the so-called seventeenth century “Little Ice Age” it was not by any reckoning the first nor the last time the river froze over. 

The cause of the ‘Little Ice Age’, and indeed when it began remains a matter of continuing research. The variety of factors that were or may have been involved is indicated in Frost fairs and the Little Ice Age

The wider implications and consequences of such climate change is discussed in an article on the Conversation website from 2022 at The original climate crisis – how the little ice age devastated early modern Europe

Similar points are made in a Canadian academic study of recorded extreme weather events in the same era that was outlined by an article in the Daily Telegraph in 2022 at Frozen birds and flooded towns: How Britain grappled with climate change 500 years ago

Extreme weather conditions in and around Bristol in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as recorded by a local man are indicated in a 2021 Daily Mail article at This week is nothing compared to age when snow pulled down trees

Two recent, different studies which look at the origins of the ‘Little Ice Age’ with similar, if not identical conclusions, can be seen from Science Norway in 2020 at What actually started the Little Ice Age? and a US based study offering a really quite sudden and drastic change around the year 1400 was reported by The Independent in 2022 and can be seen at Scientists discover ‘surprising’ cause of Europe’s little ice age

Wikipedia has an account of the frost fairs at River Thames frost fairs

There is another account spanning the centuries at The Thames Froze Over

There is a more detailed, illustrated account from Just History Posts, at When The Thames Froze Over: The ‘Little Ice Age’ Thames Frost Fairs

Art UK has a 2017 article describing the Frost Fairs and their artistic legacy in Frost fairs and the frozen Thames

History Today has an article about the 1683-84 fair which can be seen at The Great Frost Fair of 1683-4

The seventeenth century freezes are outline in an article from Shakespeare’s Globe at The year the River Thames froze over and there is a quite detailed account from Walter Thornbury’s 1878 Old and New London at The river Thames: Part 3 of 3

The 1715-16 Frost Fair is described in a Daily Express article at 300 years ago people played fun and games on the Thames

The National Archives blog writes about the material they have referring to the frozen Thames at Frost Fairs on the Thames

Project Gutenberg has the text of that not inconsiderable late nineteenth century antiquarian William Andrews’ book on the frost fairs and the many instances of the Thames freezing over at The Project Gutenberg eBook of Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs in Great Britain, chronicled from the earliest to the present time, by William Andrews.

The last Frost Fair was held in 1814 and its bicentenary was marked by a BBC News article in 2014 which can be seen at Frost fair: When an elephant walked on the frozen River Thames

My London has an account of how the flow of the river was changed in the nineteenth century such that the Thames no longer freezes, with or without recent climate changes, at Building the Tube means the Thames no longer freezes over