On the night of 26 November 1703 there was a remarkably ferocious storm which caused catastrophic loss of life and property all over the country. Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, wrote a compelling account of the storm and the damage it caused, based on eye-witness accounts. Although the Fire of London and the plague are much better known today, Defoe wrote that ‘I am of the opinion that the damage done by this Tempest far exceeded the Fire of London.’ Defoe’s book, published only seven months after the storm in the following July, included a letter from the landlord of the White Hart at Reigate which vividly describes how local people were affected.
Defoe described his personal experience of the storm which he spent in the comparative safety of his brick-built London house. He said it had been extremely windy for the fortnight leading up to the storm. Several chimney stacks had already blown down and many tiles were lost from nearby houses as the weather grew more and more tempestuous.
On the night of 26 November, the mercury in his barometer fell lower than he had ever seen it and he started to think that his children must have disturbed it when playing. The weather grew so ferocious that many people feared they would lose their houses but no one dared go outside.
At the height of the storm, buildings were shaking and some collapsing. Many windows were broken as shards of broken tiles flew about. The lead on some buildings, including the roof of Westminster Abbey, was ‘rolled up like a roll of parchment and blown in some places clear off the building.’ Nowhere felt safe and Queen Anne and her family had to take refuge in the cellars of St James’s Palace to avoid its collapsing chimneys and roof. The storm continued for days and did not abate until 2 December.
A storm of this magnitude was highly unusual. Meteorologists now attribute it to an extratropical cyclone, which develops outside the tropics when significant temperature gradients exist between clashing air masses. On this occasion, the intersection of warm tropical air and freezing Arctic air caused barometric pressure to drop rapidly over the Midlands. Consequently, the severe, fast-moving storm system tracked directly across the densely populated areas of southern England and Wales, rather than following a more typical northern trajectory past the north of Scotland.
Because the pressure gradient was so incredibly tight, the storm generated sustained wind speeds estimated between 80 to 95 mph, with localized gusts probably reaching 120 mph. These hurricane-force winds battered the country continuously for hours on end, systematically weakening buildings and other structures until they collapsed.
The Great Storm is widely considered to be the most devastating natural disaster ever recorded in the British Isles. An estimated 10,000 people lost their lives and tens of thousands of animals. In places humans and beasts were picked up and launched by the wind and hundreds of people drowned on the Somerset levels. The vast majority of human deaths were those of sailors and the Royal Navy alone lost 13 warships and over 1,500 seamen in a single night, many on the treacherous Goodwin Sands off the coast of Kent. The Eddystone Lighthouse with its 120ft tower was swept away and the six people in it were killed.
On land, Defoe recorded 400 windmills being overturned or destroyed. In some, the sails turned so fast that the friction caused the wooden wheels to overheat and catch fire, burning them down. He said that ‘no House was so strong as not to move and shake with the force of the Wind.’ In London, over 800 houses collapsed and every one of its 120 church steeples was damaged. The Isle of Wight was so covered in salt spray that it looked completely white and the same effect was seen in areas around the English Channel. For weeks after the storm, cows and sheep refused to graze off the salty pastures.
Many thousands of trees were lost and Defoe wrote that there was a huge loss of fruit trees in orchards and gardens ‘especially in the Counties of Devon, Somerset, Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester, where the making of great quantities of Cyder and Perry, is the reason of numerous and large Orchards.’ He paints a striking picture of the effect on any remaining crops in the fields. Standing hay was ‘driven up into the Air, and flew about like Feathers; that it was entirely lost and hung about in the Neighbouring Trees, and spread on the Ground for a great distance and so perfectly separated, that there was no gathering it together.’
The total damage across the nation and to the British Navy was assessed at nearly 4 million pounds. Defoe says that there was a sudden rise in the price of tiles of over 400% from 21 shillings per thousand to six pounds for plain tiles. House repairs were so expensive that landlords and tenants left an ‘incredible Number of Houses’ completely uncovered through the winter. Defoe said that it was fortunate that the storm was not followed by prolonged rainy weather, ‘though it was a Time of the Year that is generally dripping.’
During the Great Storm, the elevated Greensand Ridge of the North Downs running through Reigate, Nutfield, and Bletchingley bore the full brunt of the hurricane-force winds moving inward from the English Channel. There was massive deforestation of the ancient oaks in the surrounding landscape.
The 83-year-old diarist John Evelyn recorded that local roads were blocked by fallen trunks and boughs, completely cutting off travel and communication toward London and Sussex for days. Trees lay, ‘prostrate in rows like regiments fallen in battle.’ The tempest levelled over 2,000 trees at Evelyn’s Wotton estate near Dorking, drastically altering the local landscape. He described the loss of these trees and the extensive damage to his house and those of his tenants as ‘most Tragicall: not to be paralleled with anything happening in our Age or in any history almost.’
Daniel Defoe moved swiftly to capitalise on the news event of the year. Within a week of the disaster, he placed prominent advertisements in the London Gazette, (an official government newspaper). He called upon ‘all Gentlemen of the Clergy, or others’ across the country to send him written recollections of the storm's impact in their specific regions. He wanted to hear only facts that they were sure were true and to sign their real names in the letters. He received a huge influx of letters from which he selected a large number to publish verbatim alongside his own commentary. This captured strange phenomena that included windmills bursting into flames, cows stranded in trees in Somerset and a flying boat at Whitstable, taken up by the violence of the wind, clear off from the water, and flung against rising ground.
One of the people who wrote to Defoe was Thomas Foster, landlord of the White Hart Tavern in Reigate, one of the two leading taverns in the town. This is his full letter.
From Rigate the particulars cannot be better related, than in the following Letter
SIR,
In answer to the Letter you sent me, relating to the late great Wind, the Calamity was universal about us, great numbers of vast tall Trees were blown down, and some broken quite asunder in the middle, tho' of a very considerable bigness. Two Wind-mills were blown down, and in one there happened a remarkable Providence, and the Story thereof may perhaps be worth your observation, which is, viz. That the Miller of Charlewood Mill, not far from Rigate hearing in the night time the Wind blew very hard, arose from his Bed, and went to his Mill, resolving to turn it toward the Wind, and set it to work, as the only means to preserve it standing; but on the way feeling for the Key of the Mill, he found he had left it at his Dwelling House, and therefore returned thither to fetch it, and coming back again to the Mill, found it blown quite down, and by his lucky forgetfulness saved his Life, which otherwise he most inevitably had lost. Several Stacks of Corn and Hay were blown down and shattered a very great distance from the places where they stood. Many Barns were also blown down, and many Stacks of Chimnies; and in the Town and Parish of Rigate, scarce a House but suffered considerable damage, either in the Tyling or otherwise. In the Parish of Capel by Darking lived one Charles Man, who was in Bed with his Wife and two Children, and by a fall of part of his House, he and one Child were killed, and his Wife, and the other Child, miraculously preserved, I am
Sir, Your humble Servant, Tho. Foster.
The Great Storm of 1703 was one of the most devastating weather events to affect Great Britain and thanks to Daniel Defoe and others it was incredibly well documented. We are lucky to have John Evelyn’s diary and Thomas Foster’s letter describing the Charlwood miller’s lucky escape and the tragic deaths at Capel south of Dorking, which vividly describe how this part of East Surrey was affected.
Sources:
THE STORM: OR, A COLLECTION Of the most Remarkable CASUALTIES AND DISASTERS Which happen'd in the Late Dreadful TEMPEST, BOTH BY SEA and LAND, (1704), Daniel Defoe
History Today https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/great-storm
Met Matters, Royal Meteorological Society https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/great-british-storms-british-storms-captured-literature-and-some-shaped-weather
NY NJ PA Weather https://nynjpaweather.com/public/2022/11/18/one-of-the-most-deadly-and-destructive-storms-ravaged-great-britain-in-1703/
Portrait of Daniel Defoe, attributed to Sir Godfrey Kneller, date unknown, Royal Museums Greenwich
Cover page of The Storm by Daniel Defoe (1704)
An Extratropical cyclone located north east of Japan on February 22, 2012, NASA, Modis Rapid Response System
A Storm damaged Windmill, John Middleton, (Bef 1856), Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
The Great Storm Novber 26 1703 Wherein Rear Admiral Beaumont was lost on the Goodwin Sands... Beaumont's Squadron of Observation off Dunkerque', Unknown artist, 18th century