Paul Crabtree wrote:
Can anybody help

I am wondering if there had been any weather stations or rainfall recording
stations in my area of Brampton, Cumbria prior to me starting in 1999.

There used to be a few water treatment works nearby and they sometimes used
to record the rainfall, can anyone remembering any stations around here or
has anyone any old books/magazines/col reports etc

Three suggestions:

1. The COL Directory contains details of pretty well every station
that's ever contributed to COL: available on CD for about £6 from COL
Editor. You might find some local COL contacts have access to data from
other stations in their area, too - worth contacting.

2. If you have, or can obtain access to, volumes of British Rainfall or
Monthly Weather Report, you'll find published data from all available
stations in there. BR ceased in 1991, MWR in 1993 :-(

3. Try the Met Office archives; they're always helpful and friendly,
explain what you're after and where you are and they'll probably be
help find you the current and most recent stations in your area from
Met Office computerised listings of rainfall and climat stations. Best
of all would be to make a special trip to Exeter and look up all the
old records. The rainfall records are very easy to obtain, handwritten
monthly and annual totals for all stations are bound in decadal volumes
by area back to the 1860s. Photocopies 10p per sheet gets you 10 years
rainfall data - a bargain. (Only updated to about 1985, because
everything is now on computer archives and therefore chargeable ... )

Hope this helps

Stephen Burt
Stratfield Mortimer, Berkshire