BBC ON THIS DAY | 16 | 1987: The great October storm
Twenty years ago, I had the privilege (although I didn't see it like that at the time) to be living in a stately home in Kent which had been converted to a girls boarding school. I was there when the hurricane devastated the South East.
Many years later, I wrote about the experience on the BBC News 'On This Day' page, for which I have included the link above.
At the time, it was very exciting. 'Lime Avenue' was strewn with the corpses of mature limes trees for months - we had to jump over them or run round them when we went for cross country runs, as they were mostly lying across the avenue. Staff couldn't get to work, so for the second time that year (we had had very heavy snow in January) it was the students and resident staff who rustled up breakfast, which gave the whole thing a kind of holiday feel.
I assume that some girls just curled up somewhere warm with some revision, or in front of the television, but many of us wrapped up warm and did what we could to help. The drive was blocked in places, so we helped to move fallen branches where we could.
For places like Cobham Hall and Sevenoaks, it will take hundreds of years to repair the damage caused by the storm. Windows and roofs can easily be mended and replaced, but it takes hundreds of years for a lime or an oak to grow to full size. I'm glad I had a chance to see the lime avenue at Cobham while it still had full size trees.
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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3 comments:
Sounds an interesting time Em. I was working in London and remember trying to get to work the following day. I walked from the Kings Road over the river and kept walking up to Rathbone Place. It was incredible seeing the devastation in London.
I remember seeing the local park's trees laying across the road like fallen skittles and damaged over head electricity pylons that i could see sparking dangerously (it took weeks to clear up) A work acquaintance who had been very kind to me lost his daughter in the storm and was never the same person again.I guess this dominates my memory of the event.
There's a huge tree near Durgan that came down during that storm, we had to clamber over it to get to the beach until someone eventually cut a large enough gap for everyone to walk through. It remains there today, a slowly decaying memory.
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