370 



The Great Wiltshire Storm. 



miller, (who in passing to the mill could not reach it before the 

 storm was upon him, and clung to a rail of the orchard during its 

 entire passage) assures me that he neither heard nor saw a single tree 

 fall, so awful and bewildering was the effect of its sudden tremen- 

 dous and deafening attack. Again, in another instance, the roof of 

 a cottage was lifted off in a mass and deposited in the road : while 

 both the Church and the School sustained injury, though not to a 

 considerable amount. Throughout this village again the property 

 of Mr. Heneage suffered severely, more especially in the farm 

 occupied by Mr. Neate, where the roofs of the farm buildings and 

 barns were all more or less injured, in addition to the loss of many 

 magnificent elms and other trees, to the number of about thirty 

 five overthrown or dismantled. And again the farm of Mr. Hanks 

 sustained considerable damage, to the roofs of the house and out- 

 buildings, as well as to the barn, stack-yard and the trees which 

 sheltered them. And now " Excelsior " was the battle cry of the 

 hurricane, and with a shriek of victory and a roar of exultation it 

 rushed up the narrow ravine at the extreme east of Cherhill, leav- 

 ing that village behind it, and on and away for the open down ; 

 and chancing to fall in with a wheat rick which stood in its path, 

 it carried the greater part along with it, hurling whole sheaves 

 several hundred yards, threshing out the corn all over the field, 

 and whirling large quantities of straw above a mile. Here it seems 

 to have gathered fresh strength, as it reached the high table land 

 or plateau of the open down, and to have attained its greatest fury; 

 and spying six large trees standing out on the exposed plain, in 

 an outlying tract occupied by Mr. Salter, it hurled five of them to 

 the ground like ninepins, as it rushed by in its mad career, and 

 then on it dashed towards Yatesbury, which was to be the principal 

 scene of its triumph. And first, singling out here and there a fir 

 tree in some long plantations and belts on my glebe, it snapped 

 them off or tore them up, to the number of forty, with most fan- 

 tastic partiality, as if sending out a whiff for the purpose, as the 

 main body of the storm hurried by, and leaving the surrounding 

 trees apparently unruffled by the breeze. Thence, abstaining from 

 the slightest injury to the Church, and scarcely removing a tile from 



