Leeds nostalgia: On this day in 1947, the Leeds bus driver who became trapped beneath his bus in freezing conditions

A report of the incident ran in the Yorkshire Evening Post from the day. The accident happened on the Leeds-Pontefract Road at the bottom of John o’ Gaunts Hill, near Cinder Oven Bridge. The driver was eventually freed and suffered a badly bruised leg.

The bus was travelling from Leeds to Pontefract just after 9am when the accident happened but the only people aboard were the driver and a conductor. The driver was William Turnbull, 23, from Clifford Avenue, Wakefield, while the conductor was Jack Lackenby, of Northfield Road, Sharlston Common.

The road was said to be icy and war narrowed by piles o snow at the verge. The nearside wheel was griopped by a ridge and frozen snow and the bus was forced over the edge.

Mr Lackenby managed to escape through a window but Mr Turnbull’s leg went through a window and ended up trapped between the bus and the ground. The report at the time said had the ground not been thickly cushioned by snow, his leg would have been severely injured.

Two men from a nearby motor dismantler’s yard, Robert Kaye and Arthur Lupton, came to Turnbull’s rescue, one of them digging into the frozen ground to free his trapped leg.

Meanwhile, Samuel Smiths Brewery, Tadcaster, stopped production for the first time in 189 years, because of a shortage of fuel. The shut-down was for an unspecified period, until coal could be delivered. It used 100 tons of coal a week.

Finally, children in Yorkshire were found playing with detonators left over from the war and washed up on the beached.