Swooning in the shade: dealing with extreme heat has been a problem for many centuries, including at Wimbledon in the long hot summer of 1976
CROYDON CHRONICLES: A timely trawl through the Minster archive has discovered reports of extreme weather episodes going back more than 400 years. By DAVID MORGAN
“Rycharde Esteinge, a young man, being killed suddenlye with a stroke of thunder and lightning on the neck and under the right ear. Nothinge but blackness seen. Was buried the 29th, and smelt of brimstone exceedingle.”
Extremes of weather, with deadly consequences, of course are nothing new. The above grim record is from the Parish Church register in April 1607.
Newspaper reports have mentioned extreme conditions ever since they began to be printed in the 17th Century.
One event, though, was not reported at the time because of censorship regulations which were in place for World War I. A violent hailstorm occurred in Croydon and Purley on July 16 1918. This tempest struck along a narrow corridor with areas only a few hundred yards away being totally unaffected.
‘The size of pigeons’ eggs’: how storms were reported in 1922
The corridor of the storm was some 16½ miles long and about half a mile wide. The heaviest falls of hail and rain were at Purley on the south eastern margins, with 1.37in of rain recorded in Purley in just 11 minutes. The average July rainfall in our area is 1.4in for a whole month.
A giant piece of ice which fell to the ground in Olden Lane, Purley, measured 2½in long and 1¾ inches wide. It was estimated that the ice shard was probably 3in long – 7.5cm – when it hit the ground.
During the storm, it was noticed that when hailstones stuck particular panes of glass, a phosphorescent flash was given off, a display of what is called triboluminescence.
When it was all over, damage to property was estimated at £10,000 – close to the equivalent of £750,000 in today’s money. Lead and sheet iron cowls were dented, some windows broken, roof tiles were cracked and chipped and telephone wires cut.
Experts assessing the scale of the damage were relieved that there was little or no wind at the time, as this would have greatly increased the area and scale of destruction.
Violent hailstorms have figured prominently in reports over the years. When Croydon was still part of a rural community, hailstorms were a concern for local farmers. The Midland Counties Insurance Company was offering farmers insurance in case their crops were ruined by hailstorms back in 1866.
In early December 1880 in the north of Croydon, hail fell so heavily that in Selhurst the grooves of the tramlines had to be cleared of ice before the trams could continue their service.
“Hailstones the size of pigeons’ eggs” (does anyone know how big a pigeon egg is?) were reported in May 1922. Small boys in Whitehorse Road picked up the ice balls and quenched their thirst by sucking them.
One pedestrian in St Saviour’s Road was hit on the head by what he thought was a missile thrown by a naughty child. Looking on the ground, he saw a hailstone the size of a half-crown coin (about twice the size of a modern 10p piece) and realised that he had been hit by a phenomenon of nature and not by a rebellious youth.
This storm in May 1922 had some wide-ranging and severe effects on the borough as well as on many other parts of London. Beginning at around 6am, the thunder was likened to an artillery bombardment, with lightning being “particularly vivid”.
The safest place to be in a lightning storm: a Croydon tram in the 1920s
The fire brigade was called out to 22 Carmichael Road in South Norwood where the Rector of St Chad’s Roman Catholic Church, Rev HR Prince, was living. The property was struck by lightning, partially demolishing the chimney stack. A great deal of damage was done to the rooms at the front of the house on the first floor. A cushion was set ablaze. But the fire was quickly extinguished.
Another chimney stack was hit by a lightning strike at 15, Canterbury Road. The occupants were unhurt although the roof was badly damaged by a falling tree.
One of those living there, Mr Lake, was an old soldier from the Great War. “It took me back to France when roofs had a habit of disappearing in the night,” Lake said.
The tree which crashed into the roof was from the neighbour’s garden. It was split right through to the trunk and a portion of the bark had been stripped away by the lightning strike.
Building damage: violent storms can impact even the homes of clergy
Just after 6am, four trams belonging to the South Metropolitan Tramways Co were struck by lightning. Three managed to reach their destination, but one had to be pushed.
One tram was travelling on Stafford Road, near Coldharbour Lane, the other three on Mitcham Road. All the trams were packed with workers but no one was injured.
A spokesman for the company said that being inside a tram was the safest place to be in a thunderstorm. He explained that if a tram was hit by lightning, the electricity ran to earth without hurting anyone. The only thing that was affected was the electrical equipment.
One strange event was reported from that storm which might have come straight from a plot of The X Files (as if a vicar’s house being struck by lightning wasn’t spooky enough). A woman’s sunshade suddenly caught fire as she walked along London Road in Thornton Heath. A passer-by snatched the parasol from the lady and threw it into the road. The parasol was consumed by the fire.
A “lurid copper back cloud” was the portent for another burst of torrential rain later that same day. When the cloud burst happened, several properties in the centre of Croydon were flooded, including the offices of The Croydon Times on the High Street, which were quickly inundated by almost a foot of water.
The local paper’s reports expressed shock at the daily temperatures for Croydon which were recorded as Saturday 73F, Sunday 82F, Monday 87F, Tuesday 84F, Wednesday 86F. On the Fahrenheit scale, 86 degrees is 30 degrees Celsius.
“Baked!” shouted the headline from a hundred years ago. What would they have made of June heat records set on three successive days, as we have experienced this week, with temperatures reaching 36C?
Another major storm broke over Croydon on the evening June 12 1937.
‘The end of the world’: one lightning strike left two old sisters terrified, their house badly wrecked
The suddenness of the storm was unnerving for many Croydon residents. Thousands of people who were leaving the cinemas and the first house show at the Grand Theatre were drenched to the skin by torrential rain before they could reach the shelter of shop doorways.
Darts players at the Bull’s Head on Wandle Road had their game totally disrupted. Not only were they shaken by a loud explosion which they heard nearby, but also the lights in the pub went out, as moments later a violent flash of lightning hit the building.
The explosion which they heard was from a house on Scarbrook Road. The two occupants were elderly sisters, Bertha and Emmie Waters. They were sitting in their front room with their niece, Mrs Charlwood, as the evening light faded, watching the lightning flashes.
Suddenly, a crash of thunder and flash of lightning rocked the house with what had seemed like a violent explosion in the back kitchen.
The elderly sisters collapsed with shock and it was left to their niece to go to the front door and cry for help. A neighbour, Mr J Beart, responded to her shrieks and, seeing plumes of black smoke rising from the rear of the property, called the fire brigade.
Only one fire tender was available, as the others were putting out a major fire at a timber yard in South Norwood. When the firemen arrived at the Waters’ house, they discovered the rear chimney stack was almost destroyed, the back bedroom and its furniture wrecked while in the scullery, the cooking range had been shattered to scrap iron, with the table and chairs overturned.
The gas bracket in the centre of the scullery ceiling had been blown completely out of its socket. Firemen described the house as being hit by a “thunderbolt”.
Rafters in the bedroom were smouldering, but the flames were quickly extinguished.
Mrs Charlwood described how the three of them were feeling a little nervous with the intensity of the storm.
“I thought the end of the world had come, it was horrible,” she said.
David Morgan, pictured right, has been chronicling Croydon’s history for Inside Croydon for a decade. Morgan is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- 150 years after the last round-up for the Croydon Wool Fair
- Carriage driver yelled ‘Murder!’ in a Victorian road rage episode
- Roll up! Roll up! Enjoy Croydon’s summer fayre, 1920s style
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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