Raunds DCNN4382 – A study of a disappearing record breaker – a potential site for an historical national temperature series reconstruction.

Estimated last known location: 52.33644, -0.545705 CIMO Assessment N/A Temperature records from 1904 (possibly earlier) to 1993.

Raunds is a small town situated 21 miles (34 km) north-east of Northampton. On 9 August 1911 Raunds recorded 36.7 °C (98.1 °F), then the highest temperature recorded in the UK. The town jointly held the record with Canterbury, Kent for 79 years, only being broken in 1990. In similar style to Canterbury, and many other “record breaking” sites in the past, Raunds disappeared well over 30 years ago with the Met Office oddly almost denying its existence. High records in the past seem to be unwelcome historic artefacts to the modern day Met Office.

It has been a very common practise for the Met Office to “expunge” historic data long after the event. As I highlighted in my review of Cambridge University Botanic Gardens the Met Office was happy with deleting an 1868 reading at Tonbridge but also accepting much more dubious 21st century readings from sites know to suffer severe Urban Heat Island effect first identified in 1930. It is most odd that records can be removed due to potential uncertainties around Glaisher Stands (which probably did not occur at the record Tonbridge site) whilst similar uncertainties regarding Stevenson Screens are ignored and records verified.

In the case of “Faversham” the Met Office insisted on retaining readings despite the Royal Meteorological Society effectively proving them wrong. But then again what is in a name? Subsequent “registers” such as Torro mark this “Faversham” reading as suspect as below.

The first thing to note is not only that “Faversham” is shown as suspect, the incredibly dubious Kew Gardens (Screen at the wrong height as identified in the exact same RMetS report) is shown un-asterisked and given a seal of approval.

Secondly why have I put “Faversham” in those inverted commas? Well the same register shows for September 10th this. Nothing odd until one realises that “Brogdale” and “Faversham” are one and the same place – no asterisk required? Many sites appear under different names more than once such as Gravesend/Broadness.

This multiple site naming is not at all uncommon (see Santon Downham), causes all manner of timeline confusions (see Bala) and seems to be a case of “changing the names to protect the innocent”.

In the case of Raunds, although a long term site with records dating back to 1904, the Met Office has only chosen to digitally archive temperature readings from 1959. More peculiar still is that the Met Office’s own manuscript archives only start in 1912 – after that historic 1911 record – thus if you want to look it up……you cannot. This ties in with the Canterbury situation where it was exceptionally difficult to find any data regarding the site which it appeared the Met Office was downplaying as a potentially spurious reading when it was, in fact, of excellent provenance. I do wonder if both Raunds’ and Canterbury’s readings may also be expunged in the not too distant future. This would leave Cheltenham’s 1990 reading in Monpelier Park (during a concert event) to demonstrate solely late 20th into 21st century “warming”.

So where to verify anything about this 1911 record? As with the disputes above over Faversham/Brogdale the Royal Meteorological Society is also a valuable resource. RMetS also kept station records in the past and in their separate archiving I found the manuscripts from 1904 onwards. From my viewpoint of reconstructing a reliable historic temperature record, the 89 year record of Raunds was worth examining to see if it could be reliably used. Two important things to note was that Raunds often recorded very hot indeed and not just in summer, more later, but also that the Met office only claims a “Station start date” of 1938 – very odd.

The coordinates given relate to an area recently built up and thus there are no vestigial remains to exactly locate the site. As I did with Bala I checked the manuscript copies and the “Objects used for estimates of visibility” to confirm the coordinates given were correct.

The “Chimney at Roswhere” (formerly a domestic house now a Care Home) was a useful cross reference but the “Gasholder” had long gone. Luckily the “Rushden Research Group” came to the rescue with archived imagery to allow the former site to be pinpointed – there are some genuinely wonderful aspects to the internet and I spent quite a pleasant while learning the history of the area.

The best estimate I have reached on all the circumstantial evidence available was the rear of the large garden that was the only building in the area at the time. The site backed onto an open recreation area which looked like this from aerial imagery of 1945.

I now had confirmation of the site’s provenance back to 1912 as well as being confident that this would have been a reliable site from 1912 up to ultimate closure when the site was developed into an up market housing estate. 81 years of good accountability, but what of pre 1912 and that elusive record. The RMetS records came to the rescue but rather frustratingly so. The first data from 1904.

Unlike Met Office observations records, RMetS ones are generally simpler with less site detail but nearly always offer detailed coordinates as above – and these do NOT match the site I had identified from 1912 onwards. It seems the 1911 record was from the grounds of the local St Peters parish church – a very common practise for the time with the clergy often meteorologists and local recorders. The screen lay 1.6 km/1 mile to the north east of its successor though with negligible difference in altitude being at 62 metres rather than 59 metres.

Frustratingly the aerial imagery of 1945 does not cover this area with the subsequent images starting from 2004 and showing housing development only just recently built. Luckily the Victorian mapping of the area shows the area surrounding the Church to be open with no areas of woodland or notable specimen trees marked.

At this stage I am still trying to establish any more details regarding both these Raunds locations. With both sites not being affected by urbanisation in their lifetimes it may well be possible to use the two locations as a continuous dataset with appropriate provisos noted. This extends their historic record period to almost 90 years from what is a known warmer recording site.

As alluded to earlier Raunds is certainly no stranger to warm records.

94.2°F /34.6°C on the 8th and 90°F/32.2°C on the 11th September 1911 are both records held to this day. Bear in mind these readings do not count towards meteorological summer though regardless of that technicality the RMetS (correctly in my opinion) included these readings in their fascinating assessment of two consecutive summers of exceptional contrast. {link courtesy of the Wayback Machine which may be slow to load}.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190415094751/https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wea.818

In conclusion I would like to ask readers for any further knowledge they may have of these Raunds sites and the surrounding area. With a few caveats relating to some “missing” years data (that I am confident does exist but may not be in immediately available archives) I believe this site should be both reliable and representative enough for inclusion to a reconstructed historic time series for in the region of 90 years.

Any suggestions, corrections and general opinion would be most welcome to assist moving the Surface Stations Project to its temperature reconstruction phase.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/06/29/raunds-dcnn4382-a-study-of-a-disappearing-record-breaker-a-potential-site-for-a-historic-national-temperature-series-reconstruction/