The Great Storm of ’87

August 06, 2004

It left several people dead, buildings demolished and nationally 15m trees blown down. Here in Norfolk and Suffolk, it also caused chaos. RACHEL BANHAM looks back at the devastating effect of the Great Storm of ’87.

Trees came down on Castle Meadow as the winds raged.

It started innocently – unusually warm temperatures in mid-October. But it was soon causing havoc across southern England.

The “Great Storm” started in the early hours of Friday, October 16, 1987. Its trail of destruction left several people dead, homes wrecked and millions pounds worth of damage across the country.

Many people woke up to darkness after winds of up to 110mph brought power lines crashing down.

Home secretary Douglas Hurd chaired a crisis meeting of ministers and later praised emergency services for their work in coping with the widespread destruction.

The Queen, who was in Canada for the Commonwealth summit, was said to be greatly distressed by the devastation.

The storm had been expected to travel no further north than the English Channel. But counties from Norfolk to Cornwall suffered a battering.

One of the worst hit counties was Kent, where five people died. But other areas of the country suffered too.

In Dorset two firefighters died when their engine was crushed by a tree.
In Berkshire a guest at a pub died in her bed when a chimney crashed through the roof. The body of a 70-year-old man was discovered after a hotel was reduced to a pile of rubble in Sussex.

Electricity board workers clearing trees in Hampshire discovered a man crushed to death in his car under a tree, and in Sussex rescue workers found the body of a woman who was asleep when a chimney crashed through the roof.

A man was killed by falling bricks as he slept at Lincoln’s Inn Field, London.

A blocked road at Ditchingham.

A fisherman died when a beach hut was blown along a seafront.
The damage nationally was later conservatively computed at about £1000m. Sevenoaks, Kent, lost six of the oak trees which symbolised the town's name.

Along the east coast of Norfolk winds were measured at 120mph.

Waxham's medieval barn was one of the casualties. One of the strangest signs of the storm's passage, however, was found in a private garden at Bradwell, Gorleston, where a 20ft stretch of privet hedge was temporarily “burned” brown.

The sea was also dangerous. The bulk carrier Sumneo sank outside Dover harbour. In Essex the Earl William ferry holding 78 refugees broke from its moorings and ran aground on a sandbank off Harwich.

Much of London was without electricity for several hours and rail services in the south east were paralysed.

Felixstowe port was sealed off when a tanker laden with toxic substances broke from its moorings.

In Norfolk, the winds were blamed for the death of a man who died in his wrecked car at Tottenhill, after a collision involving a lorry where the A10 was blocked by a fallen tree.

In Bradwell, a three-year-old boy was rescued by his grandparents after a chimney collapsed, burying him in slates and rubble in his bed.

Some 40 rig workers were airlifted from a gas rig off Cromer as a stricken diving vessel drifted dangerously close.

A lorry driver from near Diss jumped clear as a toppling tree brought power lines down on to his vehicle, and then saw another falling tree crush the driver’s cab.

A Wisbech fire crew had a narrow escape when a tree crashed down just in front of their fire engine at Tydd St Mary.

And a falling chimney crashed through the roof into the kitchen of a guesthouse in Yarmouth, seconds after the owner had walked out.

Caravans were turned to matchwood at Lowestoft. A parked Cessna light aircraft was lifted into the air and overturned at Norwich Airport.

A mobile home at East Runton near Cromer was demolished as it was swept over the cliff edge and plunged on to the beach. At least a dozen caravans and mobile homes on cliff-top sites were wrecked by the gales.

Power cuts and blocked roads brought most of North Norfolk to a virtual standstill during the morning.

Wrecked caravans on the coast at North Denes.

Cromer, Sheringham, North Walsham and Holt were among the areas blacked out at breakfast time. Shops and offices were closed and trees blocked roads, including the A140 Norwich-Cromer route.

But community spirit prevailed. Police in Cromer said they had been inundated with offers of help from farmers, breakdown truck drivers and people with chainsaws to help them cope with fallen trees.

Shortly before 9am, hurricane force gusts hit Langham, Letheringsett, Holt, High Kelling and Hempstead.

The Holt to Kelling road was blocked in several places while at Letheringsett a tree crashed across a road, narrowly missing a row of terraced cottages.

Gales swept a touring caravan 50 yards across the B1159 North Norfolk coast road.

Lifeboatmen were putting out into terrifying seas off Lowestoft to answer a call for help.

Coxswain John Catchpole and his crew went out in some of the worst conditions they could remember to stand by the British coaster Gino when it got into difficulties.

At the time, Mr Catchpole described the conditions as atrocious – winds at around 70 knots as the lifeboat slipped its moorings in the yacht basin.

On Saturday, October 17, there were no main line train services to or from London although the branch line services were back to normal. Telephone faults took several days to repair.

The EDP published a special pull-out and the paper started a campaign – Plant a Tree with the EDP – offering readers a discount on buying replacement trees through Sprowston Garden Centre.

Several storm-damaged schools, including Oriel High at Gorleston, St Mary’s Roman Catholic School at Yarmouth and Acle Primary, were closed the following Monday for repairs to be carried out.

An overturned lorry on the Acle road.

But for the country’s devastated trees and woodland, the effects of the Great Storm were felt long afterwards.

The Forestry Commission at Thetford launched an aerial survey to assess precise damage to its 50,000 acre forest in the area and Gerry Barnes, a tree expert with Norfolk County Council, said he was horrified at the storm’s aftermath.

The EDP carried pictures of trees fallen at Norwich Castle Mound blocking Castle Meadow, and a golfer surrounded by damage at Thetford Golf Club.

Some 25 oaks were blown down along the drive at the National Trust’s Felbrigg Hall.

Meanwhile forester Diana MacMullen, regional officer with the Woodland Trust, summed up the feelings of many nature lovers at the time.
She wept when she saw the devastation of the storm at Tyrrel’s Wood near Pulham Market.

She predicted: “It will be a generation before the woods look anything like they did before Friday.”