Pepys described the great storm of January 1666: “The wind being very furious … whole chimneys, nay, whole houses in two or three places blowed down.” In November 1703 a storm of nine hours descended upon the city- “all the ships in the river were driven ashore” and the barges smashed against the arches of London Bridge; the towers and spires of certain London churches fell to the ground, and in many areas whole houses were lifted up before falling upon the earth. “The lead on the roofs of the highest building, was rolled up like paper,” and more than twenty “night-walkers” were killed by falling chimneys or tiles. Daniel Defoe published an account of “the late Dreadful Tempest” in which he revealed that the shriek and frenzy of the wind were such that “nobody durst quit their tottering habitations for it was worst without” and “many thought the end of the world was nigh.”
Over the next sixty years London was ravaged by several hurricanes, the last being in 1790 when the copper covering of the new Stone’s Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, “was blown off in one sheet and hung over the front like a large carpet or mainsail.” On the night of 16 October 1987, “London’s Hurricane” hit the capital. It had been preceded by two years of unnaturally cold and windy weather. In January 1987 fifteen inches of snow fell on the higher parts of London, the chimes of Big Ben stopped and the River Thames iced over from Runnymede to Sunbury; in March of that year, sands from the Sahara fell with the rain upon Morden. Then, in that October, the great wind visited the city. The balconies of high-rise flats collapsed, walls were ripped down, roofs stripped of their tiles. Market stalls were thrown through the air, and thousands of trees were destroyed by the effects of the gales.
Extraordinary climatic change is not at all unusual in London; if the city can attract plague and fire, then it also can attract tempest and earthquake. There were three earthquakes during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603), the first of which did not exceed a minute but the shock of which “was so severe that many churches and houses were much shattered and several people killed.” One of the incidental features of this catastrophe was the fact that the great bells of the city were so shaken that they began to ring of their own accord-the Westminster clock bell, for example, “spoke of itself against the hammer with shaking”-as if the city itself were heralding its own disaster. There also seems to have been some method in the mayhem; the two further earthquakes of Queen Elizabeth’s reign both occurred on Christmas Eve four years apart. The next most notable tremor occurred in February 1750 when two shocks were felt some hours apart, the second being preceded by “a strong but confused lightning darting its flashes in quick succession.” People flocked into the street, in panic that their houses were about to fall upon them, and the most powerful forces were visible and audible in the West End near St. James’s Park; here “it seemed to move in a south and north direction, with a quick return towards the centre, and was accompanied by a loud noise of a rushing wind.” So London has been visited by elemental forces, invading its central areas; the last record of such a visitation, at least notable in its effects, occurred in the spring of 1884. And then there came the fog.
CHAPTER 47
