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oldest — hardly any of the modern, cheaply-built, 

 cottages being affected, contrary to my expectation. 

 At Wivenhoe I found the appearance of the town 

 best expressed by the remark that, "It looked as if 

 it had been bombarded." That was the first idea 

 which rose in my mind. 



Hardly a house was untouched, inside or out. 

 The newest houses seemed to be externally least 

 affected, but they made up for this inside. They 

 looked as if they had been given a few half turns, 

 and then shaken up. The plaster had been detached 

 from all the walls, the roofs were rent and loosened 

 all along the cornices, and the framework of the 

 windows was everywhere splintered. The battlements 

 of the grand old church had been thrown down, and 

 about fifteen tons of rubbish lay among the crushed 

 headstones and the delicate and abundant grave 

 flowers. Here there was evidence of a semi-rotatory 

 motion on the part of the earthquake. The beautiful 

 Independent chapel is so utterly wrecked within and 

 without, that it will all have to come down. The 

 streets were full of bricks, mortar, and tiles, although 

 with characteristic English tidiness and diligence, the 

 terror-stricken inhabitants were already clearing 

 away the debris. I noticed several houses with 

 rents at the bases of their walls, and in such of the 

 chimneys as remained standing, they were frequent. 

 One thing struck me — the rents sprang at an angle 

 of about 30° at the bases of the buildings, whilst in 

 the chimneys, this was increased to from 40° to 45°. 

 The old ferryman related his experience to me, after 

 the manner of an old salt. He was just bringing his 

 boat to the shore, when the shock, occurred. "It 

 seemed just like three seas," he said ; a capital and 

 vivid idea of the wave motion. 



Crossing the river, I made my way through 

 Fingrinhoe village, and on to Langenhoe. I did not 

 see a single house on the road, large or small, for a 

 distance of about four miles, that had escaped 

 untouched. The fine old Jacobean hall at Fingrinhoe 

 has lost the upper part of the front elevation. Here 

 I found some of the chimneys that had been left 

 standing twisted on their pediments. |,I carefully 

 noted this on the way, and on examining those of the 

 massive chimneys of the rectory at Langenhoe, the 

 torsion was very plainly visible. The twist had come 

 from the south, for the faces of the chimneys which 

 had previously looked in that direction were now 

 turned almost south-easterly. I did not set out a 

 minute too soon to note these circumstances, for all 

 the builders of the country-side were already abroad, 

 and in a few days all the evidences of earthquake- 

 action of the greatest value to seismologists were 

 completely obliterated. Thus, I found a very intel- 

 ligent builder from Colchester on the lawn of the 

 Langenhoe Rectory, giving orders for having the 

 twisted chimneys removed, and I have no doubt they 

 were all taken down within twenty-four hours. He 

 had been driving all over the disturbed country-side, 



and told me that wherever the big chimneys had 

 been left they were twisted from the south-south-west 

 to the north-north-east, especially in the contiguous 

 villages of Peldon and Abberton. This, I think, 

 settles the original direction of the earthquake wave, 

 and also establishes its rotatory character. 



Langenhoe church is an utter ruin, and all that yet 

 stands will have to come down. It is a sad sight to 

 see this picturesque, ivy-clad old church — standing so 

 prettily overlooking the creeks where the ancient 

 Danish Vikings landed in the dawn of our modern 

 history ; but a comparatively few years ^before the 

 church was built, now so utterly ruined. The porch 

 on the north side is of brick, and a modern structure. 

 Two large rents run up, one on each side of the 

 doorway, at an angle of about 32°. They run from 

 opposite directions, and meet just above the keystone 

 of the arch. Here another large rent parallel with 

 the ground traverses the masonry. It seemed to me 

 that the first earthquake shock which rent the brick- 

 work sprang from the western corner, and was 

 reflected so as to form the opposite rent after striking 

 and lifting up and forming the parallel crack above 

 mentioned. The battlements of Langenhoe Church 

 unlike those of Wivenhoe, have been shaken down, 

 but while those of Wivenhoe were thrown upon the 

 ground on the west side, those of Langenhoe Church 

 were thrown on the nave, that is, in an opposite or 

 easterly direction. They crashed through the roof, 

 and carried a gallery with them ; the concussion, 

 meantime, bursting out the upper part of the chancel 

 end. Am I right in thinking that this pitching 

 forward of the loosened rubbish in opposite directions, 

 as exemplified in these two churches, taken in 

 connection with the overwhelming proof of rotatory 

 motion, indicates that the movement of the earth- 

 quake had swerved right round between Wivenhoe 

 and Langenhoe ? In that case it also suggests the 

 local character of the earthquake : Langenhoe and 

 the adjacent villages, with the Isle of Mersea close 

 by and in full view, appear to form the chief area 

 of disturbance. So far as I have been able to learn, 

 the clocks stopped by the shocks were those 

 facing the north. The newspapers referred to various 

 cracks and fissures in the ground at Langenhoe, 

 Abberton, Mersea, and elsewhere, as having been 

 caused by the earthquake. I saw numbers of them, 

 but in every instance they were the ordinary cracks 

 which always appear in the London clay during a 

 drought, or after a spell of dry weather like that of the 

 preceding few weeks. In none of the instances I saw 

 had the fissures anything to do with the earthquake. 

 The local character of the area of chief disturbance is 

 not only indicated by the different directions in which 

 the rubbish was thrown from the battlements of 

 Wivenhoe and Langenhoe churches relatively, but 

 also by the fact that whilst the western side of 

 Mersea Island suffered severely, the eastern side was 

 only slightly affected in comparison, 



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