I bet the council didn't follow that directive in their own offices!

True, and a very sore point it was!

In my old boarding school they tried to keep it off until October half terms, many pupils and teachers was complaining so they were forced to turn on the heating.  My bedroom 2 windows was perfect as it face East and South so get sun to warm the room up, the sun leaves at 4pm as it move away.  The heating come on at 4pm to 10pm and left on all night if we had snow.  After I left and my brother stayed for another 2 years one of the student who studied plumbing decided to fiddle the settings on the radiators in the bedrooms which was hidden inside the tap, he increased the output higher by using his tools and the rooms became much warmer than luke warm, not sure if this effected the gas bill for the school but radiators became hot than warm.  Nowadays you get new ones with numbers 1 to 5 and I put at 3 which is correct temperature settings for the room.  

At Winchester College, the tour guide tells the story of the 1947 winter, when the boys built a snowman inside one of the dormitories and it lasted several days until the college authorities turned the heating on.

I boarded in a building with no central heating. We had mobile convector heaters we could turn on during cold weather for an hour or so, but even then we regularly had ice forming on the inside of the windows. 

Before they modernised the bedrooms with radiators in school it was heated by hot pipes all along the lower walls just above the floor.  Rest of other rooms and classrooms was older thick metal radiators. 

So did everyone domestically in the 40s and 50s. My wife's nephew thought I was joking when I told him this.

I remember those and still saw some in the 90's when we had -10C over night temps up to 1995 until we change all the windows to UPVC which cannot ice over anymore.  What I remember from my weather data when it -9C to -9.9C it doesn't iced over but does when hit -10C or below.

Last Jan 2025 was outside of my new window which had ice crystals when it dropped near -10C that time here but not last Jan 2026 as it wasn't that cold enough only down to -6C.  

Never mind 40s and 50s, I regularly had those ice "ferns" on the inside of my bedroom window until well into the 90s, when my parents finally got the old single-pane wooden windows replaced with double glazing. It used to make a big puddle on the windowsill when it melted so you had to be careful not to leave books or anything else that didn't want to get wet on there.

The cold spell severity indicators were:

1. How high up the bedroom windows did the ice go?

2. Did the ice on the shaded bedroom windows last all day?

3. Did the ice on the sun-facing windows (my bedroom) last all day? Presumably, this only happened when it was predominantly overcast, but I can't recall with certainty.

To put some context on this, I know that my father's generation had even less heating! 

Think this is the latest we have gone without having the heating on.  (Wife gets cold if below 20c for long!). 

Any warmth you got left in your homes try to preserve them than using AC or open windows to lose the warmth.  

I hope October to stay warm side so keep the heating off as long  as possible to the end of the month..

It’s still 24c in our kitchen and almost 21c outside, and we’re typically 1c colder up here due to the elevation.

Wednesday and Thursday it's going to get cold. 🙂🙂