That year there was an intense heatwave - one of the driest summers on record with temperatures well into the 90s Fahrenheit (30s Celsius ). Click into our photo gallery above to see full-sized images of the exceptionally hot summer of 1976 in Dorset. People enjoyed clear blue skies, relentless sunshine and enough vitamin D to last a lifetime; it was so parched that a sizeable proportion of the canal system dried up.
There was even a Minister for Rain (former Sports Minister Dennis Howell), who is remembered for encouraging people to share a bath together, as water shortages affected every corner of the land. Of course many people headed straight to Weymouth beach to cool down in those sweltering conditions. Our picture gallery contains a wonderful collection of postcards of Weymouth and the surrounding area dating back to the 1970s.
Several of them are thought to come from the legendary hot summer of 1976 but you can see from many of them how much Weymouth has changed in the intervening decades – and also how much has stayed the same. Our collector bought the cards at a car boot sale and the intriguing thing about many of them is that they have been written, stamped, posted and franked – but without the correspondent filling out the address section. The writers of the postcards are full of praise for the resort and – in 1976 certainly – the weather.
Comments from that very hot summer include ‘it’s really hot here, Theresa is very badly sunburnt’, ‘the weather.
