Everybody knows about Samuel Pepys and his diary written in the 1660s. But Pepys's mildly picaresque adventures unfairly overshadow the more sober scribblings of another diarist of the same period.
John Evelyn recorded his Memoirs day by day in meticulous detail for nearly half a century, as opposed to the mere nine years and five months covered by the narrative of Pepys.
Evelyn's voluminous document, begun in 1740 and continued almost until the day he died, is less spontaneous and personal than that of Pepys, but it gives a valuable insight into the English society of the time, and indeed into the climate of the era.
We gain much insight from Evelyn's diaries, for example, into the harshness of the winters during the Little Ice Age, which was at its height around his time.
On January 24th, 1684, he writes: "The frost continuing more and more severe, the Thames before London was still planted with booths in formal streets, all sort of trades and shops furnished and full of commodities, even to a printing press where the people and the ladies took a fancy to have their names engraved, and the day and year set down when it was printed on the Thames."
In medieval times, northern Europe had enjoyed a comparatively benign climate, but a sudden change took place in the middle of the 16th century: temperatures dropped dramatically around that time, and the period from about 1600 to 1850 was the coldest for 12,000 years or more, with average global temperatures between 1 and 1.5 degrees below today's norm.
This temperature drop was more or less general throughout the northern hemisphere. In Switzerland and the Nordic countries the glaciers advanced over areas of fertile farmland, and did not retreat again until the middle of the 19th century.
In Britain and Ireland, the winters were long and very severe, and the summers cold and wet. The weather was also extremely variable, so that harvest expectations were frequently upset and great social unrest often followed as a consequence.
But 1695 was arguably the coldest year of all, with an average temperature of about two degrees lower than we are accustomed to in the 20th century. A measure of the harshness of the times can be had from Evelyn's diary entry for this day 303 years ago.
After a brief description of a cold and miserable day, he goes on to say of August 21st that year: "Greater frosts were not always seen in wintertime."
Perhaps, after all, our Irish summers could be worse.