thames 1730

[rivers]

what was held in london on the river thames christmas 1730

[jake-the-peg]

A frost fair I'd imagine.

1680-1730 was the "little ice age" temperature reached 0 F (-18 C) at the start of 1731

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/booty.weather/cli mate/1700_1749.htm


Here's a picture of the 1683 one
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/ thumb/6/64/300px-Frost_Fair_of_1683.JPG

[reinganum]

I think you may have made a typo...

Although Jake is quite right about the "little ice age" the weather in the 1730s was nothing exceptional...until the end of the decade. The winter of 1739-40 was ferociously severe and as there hadn't been any severe winters for a while, it came as a bit of a surprise. I think the Christmas in the question was therefore 1739, not 1730.

[reinganum]

Forgot to include this when posting above:

Many people think that frost fairs stopped because the climate has changed, but what is often forgotten is that the main reason was the rebuilding of London Bridge. The old bridge (built 12th C or thereabouts) was demolished in about 1830 and the new bridge (in turn demolished in the 1960s and sold to U.S. where it is now spanning a corner of Lake Havasu in Arizona) had much wider spans.

The old (mediaeval) bridge had very narrow spans and a lot of piers so the flow of the river was impeded, making it easier for ice to form. The flow of the Thames is now too rapid to allow this to happen, though parts of the Thames in the upper reaches beyond Richmond did ice up for a time in the winter of 1962-63 (not enough to permit a frost fair, though!)

[jno]

building the embankments also helped... before them, the river was wider and shallower, which apparently makes it easier to freeze over.

[fairkatrina]

Not really relevant, but if you want to read a description of what London was like at that time read 'Orlando' by Virginia Woolfe

[Narolines]

You may be right, reinganum, but wouldn't the muliplicity of piers increase, not decrease the current, as the same amount of water would have to pass through less space in the same time? Surely wide shallows are more prone to freezing, as jno suggests, and containing the flow, by embankments or many-piered bridges, actually deters freezing?

[Jomes]

See pages 69-80 in Jonathan Schneer's The Thames: England's River for info on the Frost Fairs.