The Reverend Dodgson Snowed Up at Elsdon 1762

(reproduced in Tomlinson 1888, 307):

“There is not a town in all the parish, except Elsdon itself be called one; the farmhouses, where the principal families live, are five or six miles distant from one another; and the whole country looks like a desert.

The greater part of the richest farmers are Scotch dissenters, and go to a meeting-house at Birdhope Craig, about ten miles from Elsdon; however, they don’t interfere in ecclesiastical matters, or study polemical divinity. Their religion descends from father to son and is rather a part of the personal estate than the result of reasoning, or the effect of enthusiasm.

Those who live near Elsdon come to the church, those at a greater distance towards the west go to the meeting-house at Birdhope Craig; others, both Churchmen and Presbyterians, at a very great distance, go to the nearest church or conventicle in the neighbouring parish. There is a very good understanding between the parties; for they not only intermarry with each other, but frequently do penance together in a white sheet with a white wand, barefoot, in one of the coldest churches in England, and at the coldest seasons of the year.

I dare not finish the description for fear of bringing on a fit of the ague; indeed, the ideas of sensation are sufficient to starve a man to death without having recourse to those of reflection. If I was not assured by the best authority upon earth that the world was to be destroyed by fire, I should conclude that they day of destruction is at hand, and brought on by means of an agent very opposite to that of heat.

There is not a single tree or hedgerow within twelve miles to break the force of the wind; it sweeps down like a deluge from hills capped with everlasting snow, and blasts almost the whole country into one continued desert. The whole country is doing penance in a white sheet; for it began to snow on Sunday night, and the storm has continued ever since.”