Descriptive Report.
71
A little over a quarter of a mile S.E. from Peldon Mill is
Strood Villa, the residence of Mr. Hugh Green, surgeon,
which certainly presented one of the worst cases of destruc-
tion that came under our notice. The building, although
modern (1860) and substantially built of brick, was, without
exaggeration, wrecked.33 The chimneys were demolished,
every wall cracked and twisted, the door-frames displaced,
many window-panes broken, and about 80 feet of the garden
wall thrown down. The house, which faces S.S.W., pre-
sented the appearance of having been violently twisted round
on its foundations; part of the stonework of the entrance-
porch was dislodged, the front wall cracked diagonally in
opposite directions, and on the south-eastern side another
crack, nearly an inch wide in parts, ran obliquely from
the top to the bottom corner at an angle of about 40°,
passing right through brick and mortar and crossing a
window-opening. The consulting-room, which Mr. Green
had fortunately left only a few seconds before the shock, was
destroyed by the fall of one of the chimney-stacks. In the
surgery the bottles were thrown off the shelves; a pier-glass in
the drawing-room was wrenched from the wall and thrown to
the ground, and generally throughout the house all the furni-
ture and fittings were shifted and more or less damaged, only
one room, the kitchen, being left habitable after the earth-
quake.
The school and schoolmaster's house near Strood Villa
likewise sustained much damage.
No very definite facts have come to hand respecting the
general direction of the disturbance about this neighbourhood.
Mr. Kinahan has expressed the opinion,34 that the shock was
here travelling southwards, and appeared to have had a
"rotary motion." In Mr. Symons's field-book occurs the
following note :—" Langenhoe Church, dust seen 5 seconds
33 The suddenness of the shock was well exemplified by the fact that a
bird (probably a starling) had been caught in a crack under the eaves of
the roof and there died, the remains being still visible on the occasion of
the visit of the Essex Field Club to this district, on August 4th, 1884.
34 'Nature,' June 5th, 1884, p. 124.