Black Thursday: The Essex Hailstorm of 1897

Preface

A few years’ ago, while reading ‘Romantic Essex’ by Reginald Becket (1901), my attention was drawn to a particular passage:

“Ingatestone … was the centre of the hundred square miles of Essex which was devastated in a quarter of an hour by a hailstorm on that black Midsummer Day of 1897. When I passed through it at harvest-time in that same year, the crops seemed to have been cut off a few inches above the ground, though no harvest had been reaped”.

The cultivation of peas was especially prevalent around the Chelmsford area at that time. These were grown for the London markets, and many City-dwellers came to help with the harvest in the same manner as the hop-pickers did in Kent. For them it was a kind of working holiday.

Soon after 2.00pm that day the weather changed dramatically. A cold front had arrived accompanied by dark clouds “with lurid lights”. The day became known as “Black Thursday” or “the Essex tornado”.

The Storm Breaks

The storm tracked from west to east: from Epping, through Ongar and Chelmsford, finally dying our near Colchester. The storm took the following course:

A ten-year old living at the time near Cooksmill Green later recalled (Mrs Ellen Nears, 1961):

“a very peculiar cloud almost the shape of a mushroom and very black moving very fast high up in the sky, and coming from the Ongar direction. Suddenly it started to churn up and looked awful, and the wind started to rage furiously”.

Other reports suggested that “on reaching Mill-green [the storm] divided into two currents of which one tore over Colonel Disney’s property, The Hyde, and thence towards Ingatestone, which was its outer edge, and Galleywood-common, while the other rushed towards the north-east through Cook’s Mill and Writtle to Chelmsford and Springfield”.

According to The Standard, the north-east storm continued over Kelvedon and Colchester to the sea, while the other tracked south-east towards the Rivers Crouch and Roach.

The Mill Green area of Ingatestone bore the brunt of the storm. Mrs Wilde (1913) records that the hailstorm was accompanied by a tornado:

“the force of the wind was so immense that great trees bowed almost flat before it. … A stack of chimneys at Lightoaks had come down without the inmates being aware of its fall, so great was the noise of the storm”.

Lightoaks, built only a few years earlier by architect George Sherrin was the home of the Du Cane family. Nearby Spilfeathers and neighbouring properties had roofs entirely damaged.

Miss Baker tells that:

“Mr David Christy at Margaretting Hall was on a stack and the ladder was blown down so he could not escape the hailstones, some of which were 2½ inches in diameter. A brewery dray and its pair of horses belonging to Wells and Perry was blown over”.

The Times reported that all down one side of Ingatestone High Street, window fronts “were smashed to atoms”. It comments that the only cheerful men must have been glaziers.

Hailstones fell as big as hens’ eggs. At Ingatestone one, “picked up by Mr S Horsenell of Ingatestone Post-office”, measured 5½ inches (14cms) in circumference and weighed 3½ ounces (almost 100g).

Although I had lived in Ingatestone for the first 37 years of my life, and now live in Blackmore, I had never heard about this event. So, with the intention of writing a short article for a local history group magazine, curiosity and research got the better of me and I ended up writing a short book.

Introduction

Extreme weather events have a tendency to enter our collective memory. The current generation remembers the hurricane which hit southeast England on the night of 16th October 1987. Contemporary accounts recall trees uprooted and the landscape changed by this single episode.

Although some may have heard of the Colchester Earthquake of 1884, fewer may know about the devastating hailstorm which swept Essex on Midsummer Day, June 1897. This was to have a more far-reaching effect on people than recent meteorological events.

Much activity in Essex concentrated on farming. Over a half of the adult males living in the parish of Blackmore during the nineteenth century were agricultural labourers. Family life was tough, and, with wages low, and work scarce, many migrated, demonstrated by the fact that in Blackmore there was twice the number of baptisms than burials in the parish.

As the Victorian era closed, 27% of the population died under the age of ten. Newspaper reports during the 1890s give accounts of a severe agricultural depression.

Midsummer Day, 1897

Thursday 24th June 1897 was a hot day with temperatures reaching 31°C (86°F) in Chelmsford by 2.00pm.

In the fields of Essex, there was the prospect of a good harvest and, for the farmers, increased prices. The greenhouses of nurserymen in the Chelmsford area were filling with ripening fruit and vegetables.

At Little Braxted the previous day farmer James Tabor recorded in his diary, “carted first hay here”. He described Thursday as a “very hot morning”. Labourers were out in the fields across the county, cursing the heat, hay making or pea picking.

At the north end of Ingatestone High Street there was an avenue of large trees “but several of these came down at once and the pony and trap [which Miss Baker’s mother was driving] could not return. Mother fell out onto the road, her hat flew off and was never found. People picked her up and took her into the house, which can be still seen standing next to the New Road”.

At Cooksmill Green, ten-year old Ellen, on an errand to buy paraffin and candles for her mother, was taken indoors by a neighbour and watched as huge hailstones fell which:

“smashed all the windows and greenhouses. Mrs Chalcroft was so upset that she shut herself up in a cupboard. I was too scared to move. Then some pea pickers struggled in, their faces, legs and hands bleeding badly. They had some children with them. It was awful”.

Once the storm had abated, she could not immediately get home because the road at the bottom of Shalcraft’s Hill was deeply flooded. Her father later picked her up in a brewer’s dray.

Ellen witnessed:

“drifts of hailstones were higher than the hedges. Birds lay dead, trees were uprooted … and when I got to our farm the chickens and ducks lay about dead and cattle and sheep were in a terrified state”.

Eye witness, Mr Tabor recorded in his diary the following day:

“Dull and mild. Went by train to Chelmsford. A lot of damage has been done to the crops by yesterdays hailstorm. Planted kohl rabi in mangle”.

His farm had escaped the ravages of the storm although he recorded “heavy thunderstorm in the afternoon [of Thursday] with Rain & Hail. 85 [0.85 inches] Rainfall fell in about Half an hour”.

Scenes of Devastation

The Parish Journal for Kelvedon Hatch (August 1897) observed that:

“Before the storm the gardens and crops looked most promising, much better than for many years, but within fifteen minutes all was changed: nothing left but blighted hopes and utter ruin; everything annihilated and destroyed … The loss to the parish will exceed £2,000”.

“Never within living memory had so much damage been caused within so short space of time”, wrote Rev E H L Reeve of Stondon Massey (1900). “Some of the hail stones were swept up the following morning, so large and solid had they been”.

The Essex County Chronicle, Friday, 2nd July, 1897 devoted much space to “The Tornado in Essex” with headlines:

“First Accounts pale into insignificance.
Whole farms swept clean of crops.
Enormous destruction of vegetables and fruit.
Hailstones bigger than hens’ eggs.
Slates and iron roofs penetrated”.

The newspaper spoke of the havoc wrought by the storm and the harvest all but destroyed.

“The crops of wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, and other produce … had been ruthlessly cut down and beaten into almost indistinguishable pulp and shreds by the devastating storm. The market gardens, of course, suffered in the same way, while in the greenhouses, which in Essex are used very extensively for the growth of flowers, grapes, melons, tomatoes and cucumbers, scarcely a pane of glass which faced the north or north-west was left whole. As to the dwelling-houses and places of business, their windows looked as if they had been subjected to a merciless fusillade by invading battalions”.

It describes a two-mile walk up New Road, Ingatestone to Huskards and Mill Green as a “sight too terrible to describe. ‘If some relief is not afforded, a great number of people will be utterly ruined’”.

Mr Thomas French, of Grove Lodge, Ingatestone had insured his greenhouse for 2s.6d with the ‘General Hail Storm Insurance Society’. Undoubtedly, he claimed for the loss of his greenhouse with 206 square feet of glass, valued at £11.3s.0d. The policy had a renewal date of Midsummer Day.

A similar pattern of devastation is recorded across the area.

In Abridge, the Jubilee fete was in progress. A tent full of children was blown down during the storm but nobody was hurt. Many people were drenched. Elsewhere in Essex, hailstones caused severe bruising to the victims.

Towards Ongar, at Stanford Rivers was the Ongar Union Workhouse. 200 panes of glass were broken by the storm but fortunately a “casual pauper who entered the workhouse on the night of the storm” had the requisite skills and was put to work.

The Chairman (Mr Lawrence Marriage, C.A.): “Is he is good tradesman?”

Master (Mr W Begley): “Oh, yes; he put in three while the other man was putting in one. The glass came at one o’clock. He kept at work until eight, and put in 60 panes. He is willing to stay and finish the work”.

The Chairman: “Well, then, give him a half-sovereign”.

At the Rectory, Stondon Massey, Revd. Reeve told that:

“Great stones the size of large strawberries clattered around us and panes of glass were heard crashing in the skylight upstairs and in some of the rooms to the west side of the house. We could but recall the Plague of Hail in the Book Exodus. … Our servants hearing the crash of glass and terrified by the portentous darkness believed that the end of all things had come, and were found crying in all corners about the house”.

He added that trees were badly damaged and their bark stripped in places by the ferocity of the storm. “The buds [of fruit trees] for the following year were cut off, and 1898 was devoid of fruit”.

At Quince Hall in Blackmore, the whole crop, about 22 acres, was ruined and eight chickens killed. A barn was blown over at Spriggs Farm. At Woodhouse Farm, 60 acres was damaged, with the estimated loss, £300.

“A man was mowing grass at Blackmore, his horses ran away and smashed the mowing machine, one of the knives of which entered the man’s chest and arms. If the knife had caught him lower down death would have been inevitable”.

Dozens of labourers were seen standing in their own gardens sobbing at the devastation that has occurred: “The case of the labourers is an exceedingly sad one”.

At Writtle, “a house with a single pane of unbroken glass was practically unknown”. A hailstone cut through a man’s hat. His injured head had to be stitched. Those wearing summer attire in the fields and caught by the storm had bruises the size of half-crown coins.

“At Little Baddow Rodney [near Danbury] many hailstones weighed quite half an ounce each, after lying in a ditch forty eight hours, and this in temperatures of over eighty degrees [27°C]”.

At Link House, West Hanningfield, all the windows were smashed and “the glass in the little greenhouse to smithereens. Chickens were killed as they ran for shelter, and fields of corn, just coming into ear, were flattened out like a billiard table”.

The storm appears to have claimed just one life. Mr Newcombe, of Beacon Hill Farm, Navestock, “lost his reason, his misfortune being too great for him”. He died the following month at the County Lunatic Asylum.

Aftermath

The Times called on the Government for assistance:

“Agriculture in Essex has not been a very profitable calling for years past, so that those who have just seen the whole promise of a year destroyed, together with much of their fixed capital, can have but scanty reserves to fall back on”.

Locally, the Chronicle, reported verbatim the words of the national press. Losses among farmers were estimated between £100 and £2,000. Some crops were uninsured.

The Times spoke of the “stroke of fate” upon Mr Riley, an Ingatestone farmer:

“Mr Riley is worse off than the farmer who has done nothing all year round, for he must dispose of the ruined crops before he can prepare for next year … his fortune has collapsed”.

The Daily Telegraph reported:

“[an] unfortunate [Ingatestone] farmer says: ‘I don’t know what to do with the land. I cannot plough the straw in, and I shrink from the expense of cutting it. I shall have no harvest. I shall have plenty of firewood; but I sha’n’t have much meat to cook. I must sell my stock, and I fear I must discharge my men. I could not estimate the damage, nor will it be known for two years, and at that time I mayn’t be here to see’”.

George Woods, of Cooksmill Green, wrote to The Essex Herald:

“The workmen have no harvest, and women no gleaning, little pea-picking and all their garden fruit destroyed. Threshing machines are idle, and there will be no employment for many during the winter months. I only know of a few who have their seed corn left”.

The Chronicle appealed on behalf of those who had suffered:

“We trust that the urban and manufacturing portions of the county, and those districts which have escaped this terrible visitation, will come forward liberally and promptly”.

The Rector of Doddinghurst (Revd. F. A. Adams) forwarded to national and local newspapers a letter to the Lord Lieutenant of Essex, Lord Rayleigh, for help. He asks the Editor of the Chronicle to “do what you can to assist the sufferers – both tenant farmers and cottagers, as indeed, all others struggling for a living who have been injured … to call as loudly for help as does the cry of an Indian or Irish famine”.

Between 500 and 600 acres of corn was “worthless” in his parish of less than 2000 acres.

The Chelmsford Meeting

A meeting was called at the Shire Hall in Chelmsford on the afternoon of Friday 2nd July. The notice read:

“It is desirable that the Farmers Nurserymen and their Friends should attend and be prepared, if called upon, to testify as to any losses which they or their neighbours may have sustained.
Thomas Usborne”

Friday was market-day. Reginald Beckett (1901) observed that:

“There is no busier place in the world than Chelmsford on a market-day. Here the broad-shouldered husbandmen, clad in tweed and homespun, whom you may have met on their lonely farmsteads or in the warm parlours of village inns, bring samples of their produce, and in a babel of homely speech determine for the rest of the world the price of its daily bread”.

Over 600 people attended the meeting. Speakers included Lord Rayleigh, who presided at the meeting, and Thomas Usborne, MP for the Mid Essex Division. Over £3,000 was subscribed to the Fund that afternoon.

A Committee was formed to administer The Essex Storm Relief Fund and all eight Essex MP’s supported calls to the Lord Mayor of London to open a Fund.

Shire Hall, Chelmsford

The Mansion House Fund was opened by the Lord Mayor on 5th July. The Editor of The Essex Herald reflected:

“We must also express a hope … that in any distribution which is made, the case of the labouring classes will be well remembered. They have been accustomed to look to the harvest as a time wherein to earn extra money for the payment of their cottage rents, for the purchase of fuel for the winter, and for setting themselves up in clothing and boots. For such as will be unable to get harvest work this autumn the outlook must be extremely dismal”.

The typical wage during harvest 1897 was 2s.4d per day, shown in the diary of James Baines of Wintry Park Farm, Epping. His farm escaped the storm.

In the House of Commons on Tuesday 6th July a spokesman said:

“Competent observers have stated that the loss would not be covered by £200,000 … I do not think that the Government could safely intervene even in the most unfortunate circumstances of this particular case”.

It was decided to cancel the Ingatestone and Fryerning Horticultural Society show. Ongar was a similar casualty of the storm and “the show usually held in November may likewise be abandoned because so many chrysanthemums were ruined”. The shooting season would be badly affected by the number of killed birds.

In the July quarter of the Essex Review it was recorded:

“A sum exceeding £40000 has been collected by means of a County Fund, working in agreement with a Mansion House Fund, and relief to the more needy sufferers has been distributed through the very able and representative committee, but their labours not being ended, official details from their report are not yet public property”.

The Lord Mayor, Sir G Faudel, received an illuminated address from the Committee, signed by Fred O E Petre, Chairman, and Frank Whitmore, Honorary Secretary. It thanked him for his prompt generous action. It is dated November 1897.

The work of the Committee, the correspondence, visits and distribution of money is unfortunately not preserved. This would have shed light on the plight of individuals.

Claims from Stondon Massey

The parish of Stondon Massey has retained a record of the claim, dated 25th October 1897, coordinated by the Rector, Revd. Reeve. The form is titled “Tornado in Essex. 24th June 1897. Men who lost their Harvest Wages”.

It lists the names of the employee and employer; the weekly amount actually earned and the amount “would have earned if had full harvest”. The claim constituted the loss, typically between £1.10s.0d and £2 per man.

Mr Tyndale White, of Stondon Manor, personally supplemented compensation from the Fund by £100. Mr Parkin, a tenant, received £25 and each farmer £6. A Mr Knight, a “small farmer in grass who had no compensation from Chelmsford having no cereal crop” received £2.

Eight “labourers not compensated having no fixed place of work” received 10 shillings each. It appears that the Hailstorm Fund compensated those who had fruit trees in their gardens. Mr Tyndale White gave additional sums ranging from five to fifteen shillings.

Finally, £5 was donated for a “Christmas Tree to Children” and £6, the “Balance in coal to the cottagers”.

The Final Relief Fund Accounts

The Essex Review reported the following year a summary of accounts:

“A year has elapsed since the devastating storm of last midsummer day, and the distribution of the sum subscribed for the sufferers is now concluded. The cash account of Mr Robert Woodhouse, the treasurer of the Essex Tornado Relief Fund, has been issued by the hon. sec. Mr Frank Whitmore.

The account shows receipts amounting to £45,753.15s.4., and the sums granted in relief reached a total of £45,147.4s.4d.. The general expenses, including £165.4s.6d. for clerk’s services, amounted to £406.14s.11d. and the sub-committee have also voted an honorarium of 150 guineas to the honorary secretary, thus leaving a balance of £42.6s.1d. in hand.

The cases relieved numbered 3168 as follows:

• 10 cases receive £400 and over
• 55 cases receive £200 and below £400
• 80 cases receive £100 and below £200
• 94 cases receive £50 and below £100
• 112 cases receive £20 and below £50
• 85 cases receive £10 and below £02
• 231 cases receive £2 and below £10
• 2501 cases receive below £2

David Smith, recording the reminiscences of his father, John (born 1862), says “a few, whose crops had been light anyway, did quite well out of it”.

Revd Reeve of Stondon Massey wrote:

“No doubt mistakes were made, and there were cases in which the losses of farmers were so satisfactorily recouped that it was said they had reason to wish for a similar storm every year! But it was better to make a few mistakes than to leave any case of real distress unrelieved”.

Conclusion

Writing a commentary to his transcript of the Blackmore Parish Registers (1602 to 1812) in 1897, R H Browne concluded:

“I must content myself with just mentioning that this year [1897] has been a remarkable one in several respects. The Queen’s [Diamond] Jubilee celebrations causing universal rejoicing. There is an abundant harvest both of hay and corn despite the great storm of June last, which devastated about seventy square miles in the County between Epping and Chelmsford. Large sums are being subscribed locally and at the Mansion House for the relief of the sufferers”.

The year was certainly remarkable and memorable for those who witnessed these events.

Epilogue

It seems that a storm such as this was not a unique event in Essex. Revd. Reeve records that in 1878 at Stondon Massey a window at the Rectory was damaged by hail.

On 27th May 1913, Ashdon in the north of the county suffered a similar fate. It was again a hot day with the storm breaking about 3.00pm.

Spike Mays (1972) described hailstones the size of cricket balls which damaged roofs and panes of glass. Fruit was ruined and green corn was bowed and bent. An elderly man was bruised by the stones having been caught out in the storm in light summer clothing.

The storm was localised: in Saffron Walden, five miles away, the hailstones were the size of peas.

Finally on 5th September 1958, after an extremely hot day, a heavy storm crossed southern England and in Essex one month’s rain fell in one evening. At Horsham in West Sussex hail fell with the largest recorded hailstone to date, weighing about 8 ounces (191g).

Bibliography

• Baker, Miss G. M. Margaretting. The Village With A Beautiful Name. Volume II (Miss G M Baker, 1983)
• Beckett, Reginald A. Romantic Essex (Dent, 1901)
• Currie, Ian; Davison, Mark; Ogley, Bob. The Essex Weather Book (Froglets Publications, 1992)
• Hope-Moncriff, A. R. Essex (A&C Black, 1909)
• Ketteridge, Christopher, & Mays, Spike. Five miles from Bunkum. A village and its crafts (Eyre Methuen, London, 1972)
• Reeve, Rev E. H. L. Stondon Massey (Wiles & Son, Colchester, 1900)
• Smith, David. No Rain In Those Clouds (Dent, 1943)
• Wilde, Mrs E. E. Ingatestone and the Great Essex Road, with Fryerning (Oxford University Press, 1913)
• Essex County Chronicle. 2 July 1897
• Essex Countryside
• Essex Review. July 1897, July 1898

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the Editor of ‘Essex Life’ for permission to use two photographs originally published in the June 1961 edition of the ‘Essex Countryside’.

To the staff at Chelmsford Library and the Essex Record Office for their assistance.