IT WAS a notoriously hard winter when these schoolgirls were pictured larking about in the snow.

The devastating winter of 1946 to 1947 was said to be the harshest in living memory - and is generally accepted as being the worst of the century.

Described in The Wharfedale and Airedale Observer as the 'Great Snow' the fiercely cold conditions saw the River Wharfe freeze over for seven long weeks.

Many rural areas were completely cut off by deep snow for more than a month with drifts of up to15ft which even covered a telegraph pole at Stainburn.

The big freeze left hundreds of people dead before it finally came to an end in March.

The photograph was taken in Ilkley in January 1947 - probably before the worst of the big freeze began, and when the snowy weather was still something to laugh about.

Half a century later - in 1996 - these two young girls may well have been hoping for snow when this photograph was taken. No details remain with the picture, which is from the archives of the Wharfedale Observer.

FIRST World War sentences by Richard Thackrah.

Robert Metcalfe died aged 99.He was one of 16 children and his wife bore him 13 children. He mowed two acres of grass a day for 7d and he knew many veterans from the Battle of Waterloo!

Grand Christmas concert in Kings Hall in aid of Belgian Soldiers’ Christmas Fund.

Church Mission Society sale of work at Ilkley Parish Church.

Signaller C.Smith wrote a poem while in the trenches on the Western Front called “Hard Lines of Communication”.