BITTERLY cold winters which once brought blizzards and snow drifts many feet deep to East Lancashire, seem to have melted away.

Making icy slides on the school playground, thawing school milk bottles on the central heating pipes around the classroom and sledging with your friends down the street, are winters' tales from a different age.

The people of East Lancashire have shivered in several severe winters of the past - the winter of 1940 couldn't have come at a worse time, as folk faced hardships with the war, while the winter of 1947 and that of 1963 will long be remembered for their weeks and weeks of continued sub-zero temperatures.

Country roads are always hit the worst and when there's an emergency, it calls for emergency measures.

25 photos from when it REALLY snowed in East Lancashire

This image from the late fifties, shows men who worked the West Close mine, owned by Crosby's, close to Higham, digging out drifts of a different kind.

For after a heavy snowfall, the emergency services called on the miners to help assist an ambulance reach an injured lady, whose home in Newchurch-in-Pendle was cut off by deep drifts.

Excavators from Crosby's were dispatched and they cleared a path through the country roads so the woman could be rushed to the hospital.