140 CHRISTY: THE MID-ESSEX WIND-RUSH AND WHIRL-WIND.
feet away, which was not blown over. The first (or southern-
most) arch was bent right over sideways to the S.E.; the second
was not bent at all; the third was bent over sideways to the
N.W.; the fourth was not bent at all.
At this point, too, many chimney-stacks were overthrown,
some of them smashing in roofs and falling into upper rooms, as
at Writtle House. At one house (Miss Smales), two brick chim-
ney-stacks were broken off cleanly at their bases and laid down
neatly and almost intact on the sloping slate roof (see Pl III.).
Standing a little way from the house, one was able to look up
through them. In one or two cases, the gale descended chimneys
with such violence that coals burning in the fire-grates were
blown about rooms, causing small fires, though these were soon
extinguished.
Again, several houses (including the Vicarage, which is
of brick) which seemed to have sustained no injury, except to
their roofs, had apparently suffered considerable strain; for
certain of their internal doors were found to have been jammed
when attempts were made afterwards to open them.
From the Cross Roads, the storm passed on to and traversed
the broad open St. John's Green. Here two-thirds of the
twenty or thirty houses and cottages ranged along its two sides
were deprived of chimney-stacks or otherwise injured; piggeries
and stables were demolished, liberating their occupants; and
chicken-houses were removed bodily. The grocery shop of Mr.
A. Barwood suffered so severely that not a bedroom in the
house or a stall in the stables remained usable.
The storm, as it passed Writtle, was accompanied, I am told,
by violent thunder and lightning. The roaring and rushing
noise of the storm itself was also very great. It was heard from
a couple of miles away as it approached across the fields. People
at first ascribed the sound variously to an earthquake, the
approach of some new kind of flying machine, or a number of
heavy traction engines tearing along a hard road. In the
village itself, the noise was increased by the smashing of trees,
the falling of chimneys and garden walls, and the avalanche of
bricks and tiles. The occupants of some houses thought (as
bricks, tiles, beams, ceiling-plaster, branches of trees, and broken
window-glass began falling all round them) that traction engines
had become unmanageable in the street and had crashed into
their houses. Others thought, quite naturally, that an earth-