The 1862 Tornado
The 1862 Tornado is mentioned in a local 1864 White and Co trade directory: “For an account of the tornado that visited Coddington and the neighbourhood in 1862 see page 52.”
The tornado was reported nationally – this is the extract from The Times of May 10th 1862:
Tornado at Newark
“The storm of Wednesday afternoon last raged at Newark with astonishing violence. The hailstones were of enormous size, some of them weighing 4 oz. each and measuring 6 in. in circumference. Thousands of panes of glass were broken. But the most striking part of the phenomena was a tornado, which seemed to commence a few miles south-east of the town, and extended as far as the plantation of Mr. Grosvenor Hodgkinson M.P. in the village of Winthorpe, about two miles north-west of Newark. The desolation it has caused at Coddington in particular baffles description. The farmstead of a person named Daybell on the Coddington-Hill was reduced almost to a heap of ruins.
The hurricane continued its devastating course direct to Winthorpe, carrying away seven or eight tons of straw from a farm yard, and damaging the buildings. At Winthorpe it seemed to renew its fury, and tore up numbers of large trees as though they had been gooseberry bushes. One clump of five large elm trees, close together, were dragged up by the roots without being separated. The whole was the work of a few seconds. The smell of sulphur when the tornado had passed was almost insufferable. Very little livestock was killed. It is remarkable that the cattle in the fields exhibited the greatest terror before the wind approached, in the manner described by travellers in tropical countries.”
This was not the only time that Hilltop has been affected by a tornado. It was also damaged by a hurricane on 3rd Jan 1983, as this picture shows:
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