EARTHQUAKES IN LONDON.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3139, 20 July 1881, Page 4

EARTHQUAKES IN LONDON.

The first notice we have of an earthquake in tho Metropolis is by William of Malmesbury, who says that in 1101, all England was terrified " with a horrid spectacle, for all the buildings were lifted up and then again settled as belv-io. - ' In 1133, many houses were overthrown from a similar cause, flames being said on that occasion to have isjued from rifts in tho earth, and to have defied all attempts to quench them. A third earthquake,, this time general throughout the country, took p]-*<*e on Monday in the week before Easter in 1185. Holinshed, with his accustomed eye to prodigies, says it was such an earthquake "as the like had not been heard of in Enghnd sinco the beginning of the world ; for stones that lay couched fast in the earth were removeed out of their places, houses were overthrown, and the great church of Lincoln rent from the top downwards." Tho next of theca mysterious convulsions of Nature connected with. London took place 0" St. Valentin-*'- Eve in 1247, wiV" much property in the Metropolis was u„maged. The statements of the old writers, from their tendency to magnify wonders, are not much to be relied upon in matters of this kind ; but it may be mentioned that they recorded in this connection a very singular phenomenon, namely, that for three months before the occurrence of the earthquake in 1247, the sea ceased to ebb nnd flow on the English coast, or the flow at least was not perceptible. —Chambers' Journal.