100 MR. A. W. PRESTON ON THE GREAT GALE OF MARCH 2i, 1895. 
was laid flat, not a tree left standing, and the grounds at Brundall 
House, noted for the great variety of beautiful trees and shrubs, 
were left a perfect wreck, large trees being piled one on the top of 
another. In some parts of Norwich the houses looked as if they 
had been bombarded, the roofs being stripped of tiles, chimney-stacks 
fallen through the roofs, and windows blown in. On some estates 
hundreds, and on others thousands of fine trees were laid flat, and 
in many cases whole plantations were left with hardly a tree 
standing. It is no exaggeration to say that in the county of 
Norfolk, the number of large trees uprooted must have far exceeded 
100 , 000 . 
But to give anything like a full account of the damage done in 
the county by this disastrous gale would be beyond the limits of 
this paper, in fact, the damage done even in a small radius might 
fill a book. Happily not much injury to life and limb was reported, 
the most serious case was that of a Nonconformist clergyman at 
Pulliam, who was killed in the pulpit by the falling of the gable 
of the Chapel. Had the storm occurred in the night, or even in 
the daytime of an ordinary week day, there is no doubt the list of 
personal accidents and loss of life would have been a long one. 
After 3.30 p.m. the barometer rose briskly, and from 4 p.nr. the 
gale gradually abated. At 9 p.m. the barometer had risen to 29.34 
ins., the wind was W.N.W. about force G, and there was much 
distant lightning. 
To arrive at the exact velocity of the most violent gusts of this 
terrible gale is a matter of difficulty, as no registering instruments 
seemed adequate to record with exactness the full fury which was 
experienced. Mr. Willis, at Ipswich Koad, Norwich, where a large 
number of fine trees were blown down, personally recorded a 
velocity of sixty miles an hour or force 10, and estimated that at 
the height of the gale the velocity was seventy miles an hour, or 
force 11. This almost exactly coincides with what was experienced 
at the Sailors’ Home, Great Yarmouth, where Mr. Watson informs 
me his anemometer recorded seventy miles per hour. There is no 
doubt, however, that some of the gusts considerably exceeded that 
velocity. In a discussion on wind forces at the Royal Meteorological 
Society in 1874, it was said that “a hurricane that tears up trees 
and throws down buildings” (Bouse) is a velocity of 110.48 miles 
per hour. If this statement be true it would appear that some of 
the gusts during the recent gale must have approached at least one 
hundred miles an hour. 
