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The Great Wiltshire Storm. 



sun the previous year,) so terrific the crash of falling roofs, (tiles 

 and rafters and thatch seeming to fill the air, while the windows 

 were beaten in by the hail,) that many thought the Judgment Day 

 had arrived, and others believed an earthquake was demolishing 

 their homes. Indeed, so appalling was the whole scene, and in 

 consequence men's senses seem to have been so paralyzed with ter- 

 ror, that, (strange to say,) along the whole line of storm, where 

 hundreds of trees were thrown down, scarcely a single individual 

 saw or heard a tree fall, and nobody realized what was occurring 

 till the hurricane had gone by. But in three minutes the storm 

 had passed on, and then when the frightened villagers emerged 

 from their cottages, what a sight met the eye on all sides; the 

 largest trees torn up by the roots, upheaving tons of earth attached 

 to them to a height of fourteen feet above the ground, large 

 branches snapped off and carried on many yards from where they 

 fell; barns in ruins or prostrate on the ground; ricks demolished, 

 and the sheaves carried away; their own houses unroofed, and 

 their gardens filled with straw, fallen chimneys, and tiles; and all 

 this havoc effected in three minutes of time ! 



Such is the general description of the storm, as I have gathered 

 it from many eye-witnesses along its whole line, and from a per- 

 sonal and very minute inspection of its scene from end to end. I 

 proceed now to relate more in detail the exact course it took, and 

 the mischief it caused. 



The first intimation we have of its assuming any great force, the 

 first mark indeed of its prowess, is on the property of the Marquis 

 of Lansdowne, near the Devizes road, about a mile south of Calne, 

 where it broke off the large branch of an oak tree within the pre- 

 cincts of Bowood Park: thence, steering eastwards, it partially 

 tore off the thatch of a cottage ; blew down three trees at Stock 

 Street, the property of Mr. Robert Henley ; and passed on to the 

 Rookery Farm, where it also prostrated several fine elms and de- 

 capitated others. Thence to Quemerford Villa, astonishing the 

 inmates by bursting in the door and windows: and so on to Mr. 

 Slade's Mill, the property of Mr. Tanner, who suffered so largely 

 at Yatesbury: here it scattered far and wide the stone tiles of the 



