Winter reigns over the land: Country diary 100 years ago

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 30 January 1917The biting east wind played on the swaying wires beside the road, striking notes now melancholy moans, now high-pitched screams; it swept across the mere, lashing white foam from the wavelets; it drove floating ice fragments into the rushes and reeds, scrunching and churning them against the ice-discs which clung to each stalwart stem. The western shore was caked with ice, each grass stem which had caught the splashing waters deep