178 



1811 : — "We were visited by a most tremendous storm of thunder and light- 

 ning and rain on Monday, which commenced about 3 o'clock, from an E. direc- 

 tion, and proceeded with great violence towards the N.W. Its fury had only 

 the cessation of an hour from the commencement until nearly 8 o'clock, and 

 we fear its fatal effects will be felt severely in many parts of the country. At 

 Mordiford, near this city, the consequences have been truly lamentable. The 

 waters collecting from the several adjoining hills of Backbury, Fownhope, &c., 

 formed immediately above the village an irresistible torrent, and totally swept 

 away and destroyed a corn mill, a cottage, and a barn, which in vain opposed 

 its progress. Some of the weightier parts of the mill were carried many 

 hundred yards from the site of the building, and much injury done to several 

 other houses ; but what is most to be lamented, the miller and his servant, 

 the female cottager and her daughter, were all lost in the overwhelming flood, 

 and their bodies have not yet been found. A number of pigs were drowned, and 

 several carried across the Lugg, together with one of the heavy wheels belonging 

 to the miU, by the force of the torrent, which absolutely made its way over 

 the channel of the river : trees were also torn from their roots and borne along 

 by it ; in short, its effects have been most fatal and destructive on the unfor- 

 tunate spot subject to its fury, and the danger it has done considering the short- 

 ness of its diuation almost exceeds belief." From a subsequent paper it appears 

 that one body was found ten days after at Ballingham. A tablet in Mordiford 

 Church commemorates the storm, giving the additional information that the 

 Pentelow was swollen to an extent of 180 feet in width, with a depth of 20 feet, 

 and that many hundred tons of rock were blown up and carried through the 

 village. I have talked with old inhabitants of Mordiford, who remember the 

 storm, and have gathered from them that there is no exaggeration in this 

 account, and that it is to this event that the very modern aspect of the gorge 

 is to be attributed. Since Mordiford has been a village there has never perhaps 

 been such an evening as this ; but in the geological ages how often must the 

 gorge have witnessed such proofs of the fearful possibilities of nature, of the 

 singular adaptability of the WooUiope district for a display of the irresistible 

 power of water ! 



PRESENT CONTOUR. 



I purpose now to investigate the causes, which have prevented the 

 perfect and regular development of the upheaval, referring for further details to 

 the "Silurian System" and the "Memoirs of the Survey." With the excep- 

 tion of the curious promontory near the Putley Cocksboot, where the Aymestry 

 ridge is broken off, there is little irregularity on the N.B. side of the district 

 from Stoke Edith to Oldbury ; but on the other side by Sollers Hope, Fownhope, 

 Mordiford, and Dormington the case is altered. Great weight must be attached 

 to the influence of the hard cornstone ridge below Fownhope in shutting in the 

 beds and preventing their due expansion. At Lindels the Aymestry ridge has 

 been squeezed out for the distance of a mile, the Wenlock limestone being faulted 



