Winthorpe Tornado - 1862

Tornado at Newark – 1862

The storm of Wednesday afternoon last raged at Newark with, astonishing violence. The hailstones were of enormous size, some of them weighing 4oz. each, and measuring 6in. in circumference. Thousands of panes of glass were broken. But the most strik­ing part of the phenomena was a tornado, which seemed to commence a few miles south-east of the town, and extended as far as the plantation of Mr. Grosvenor Hodgkinson, M.P., in the village of Win­thorpe, about two miles north-west of Newark. The desolation it has caused at Coddington in particular baffles all des­cription. The fine plantation on the estate of Mr. James Thorpe, of Beaconfield House, is almost entirely destroyed, and many of the largest and most beautiful trees in the park are torn up by the roots and split into pieces. The gas house and other buildings were considerably damaged. The farmstead of a person named Daybell on the Coddington hill, was reduced almost to a heap of ruins, a great part of the stacks being carried away and scattered in the adjoining fields. Other houses in the vil­lage were damaged in a similar manner. The hailstones went through the windows like a shot from cannon. The hurricane continued its devastating course direct to Winthorpe, carrying away seven or eight tons of straw from a farmyard, and damag­ing .the buildings. At Winthorpe it seemed to renew its fury, and tore up numbers of large trees as though they had been goose­berry bushes. One clump of five large elm trees, close together, was dragged up by the roots without being separated. It is impossible at present to give any correct idea of the amount of damage. The whole was the work of a few seconds. The smell of sulphur when the tornado had passed was almost insufferable. Very little live stock was killed. It is remarkable that the cattle in the fields exhibited the greatest terror before the wind approached, in the manner described by travellers in tropical countries.

From THE TIMES, Saturday May 10th 1862. Price 3d.

Pat Finn. November 2013.