Nunraw Abbey snowed in

Focus on the freeze - Courier   

 

Pictures Nunraw

East Lothian witnessed the highest snowfall, at Nunraw Abbey, near Haddington, where Met Office experts said 43cm (17in) had collected since Friday. Official snowfalls of 9cm, 8cm and 18cm were recorded at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen respectively, although reports suggested far more had fallen in parts of the cities. 

Weather Monk at Nunraw Abbey
Met Office Link  

On the eighth day - the snow mantles the roofs

Second to Nun for snow - News - Roundup - Articles - East Lothian ...

2 Dec 2010 ... Second to Nun for snow , Byline: East Lothian Courier.
www.eastlothiancourier.com/.../407827-second-to-nun-for-snow-/ 

Published: Thursday, 2nd December, 2010 9:29am

Second to Nun for snow

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IT was business as usual, well, almost, at Nunraw Abbey this week – despite its new-found status as Britain’s snow capital.

The 12-strong community of monks based more than 400ft above sea level in the Lammermuir foothills near Garvald is used to heavy snowfalls, but this latest deluge was something else. With 43 centimetres of the white stuff falling on the abbey last weekend, it eclipsed sites in the Cairngorms, Grampians and Northumberland National Park as the worst-hit place in the UK.

Abbey looks north to Firth & Fife

The snow left Nunraw virtually cut off from the outside world, with access only possible by four-wheeled drive vehicles.

Nunraw (43cm snow) looks to Lammermuirs and skyline

For Abbot Mark Caira, the whiteout revived memories of the bitter winter of 1962/63, when as a young monk he experienced some of the most severe conditions ever recorded on mainland Britain.

“In the winter of 1962/63 the snow was so bad that it eventually piled up to the level of the first-floor windows,” he said. “While I hope that won’t be the case on this occasion, we’ve still had an incredible amount of snow in a very short period of time. We’ve never seen anything like this in November before.

“Our cook, who lives in Haddington, could not make it up here in her own car, so we had to send a Land Rover down to fetch her.

“At Sunday’s 11am mass we only had three members of the congregation turn up, whereas we normally can expect around 40. The three who did make it have to be commended, as they walked several miles through the snow to get here.”

A group of Glasgow schoolchildren who had been staying at the abbey’s guesthouse when the blizzards arrived had to be transported down to Haddington by tractor in order to commence their homeward journey.

The abbey’s large diesel storage tank has sufficient capacity to heat the building for several weeks, while there is a back-up generator in place in case of power failures.

The snow, however, has forced the closure of the guesthouse and the monks’ Castle Moffat Farm, which lies a further 100ft up the hillside.