Some Account of the Storm of January in Bedfordshire. 211 
plantation of the Duke of Bedford’s, several fir-trees were rooted 
up; the destructive effects of the storm may be tracked, through 
that and an adjoiming plantation on Wavendon Heath, to the 
Fuller’s-earth Lodge on the high road to Northampton. From 
this place to Woburn Park there was no obstruction offered to 
its progress. It attacked the evergreens in a plantation at Crawley 
Grange near the gate of some water-meadows on the west, and 
continued from thence to Crawley Grange plantations on the east. 
Several very large trees were uprooted by the violence of the 
wind, principally spruce fir, and many others broken in the 
middle by their fall. It then took the course of a hollow in 
a plantation of evergreens in Crawley Dean Hills, clearing away 
all that resisted its progress—passing over the open part without 
causing much damage. At Flitwick, about five miles distant, a 
windmill was blown down, its cap and sails destroyed—half of | 
one of the latter was carried sixty yards before it fell, and then 
rebounded ten yards further. One of the flaps, made of iron 
and canvas, was blown to a distance of one hundred yards from 
the mill. Several houses and barns in the village were untiled. 
The storm then appears to have passed off in the direction of 
Hitchin, on the borders of Hertfordshire. Its fury however ap- 
pears in a great measure to have been spent on the plantations 
of the Duke of Bedford, in the park and its vicinity. 
The number of trees blown down and broken on this property 
is about five hundred. The principal damage was to the fir tribe, 
and this is perhaps to be accounted for from their leaves holding 
the wind, offering an obstacle to the gale, while the leafless state 
of oaks, beeches, and other timber presented in this respect no 
resistance. 
_ A person who was on his way to Brickhill describes the violence 
of the storm to have been so great, as to force up the gravel on 
the road, and carry thorn bushes between two and three hundred 
yards. Several trees were blown down near him ; the window- 
shutters of a house torn off; and all this destruction is stated not 
to have occupied more than a minute and a half. It was ae- 
companied by a torrent of ram. A young man who was going 
from Crawley to Woburn encountered the storm. Rain not 
falling when he left home, he had not provided himself with any 
defence from what he did not anticipate on starting; he states 
that he had not proceeded more than ten minutes on his way, on 
arriving at the corner of the park wall on the road from Ampt- 
hill to Woburn, when his clothes and hat were entirely soaked 
through by a most heavy rain. In endeavouring to pass along 
the foot-path which runs close under the wall, it was with the 
utmost difficulty, owing to the violence of the storm, that he 
could maintain his footing ; indeed it was so violent as to compel 
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