Serious damage was done in Northants and Bedfordshire by the gales this week, many telegraph wires being broken.  Northamptonshire has not had its telephone and telegraph communication so seriously interfered with since 1916.

  The gale of Monday evening took toll in Rushden to great cost.  A fairly large area of tiles was blown off the Park-road Baptist Church.  The large tree which stood in the South-End School playground was blown down (thus settling the question which the School Managers debated!).  Roof slates were dislodged, one, at the bottom of Victoria-road, narrowly missing a passer-by.  Half-a-dozen slates came off the roof of the Co-operative Stores in Queen-street, and similar damage occurred at the Co-operative Stores in Wellingborough-road.  A notice-board narrowly missed a man and a woman going by at the time.

  A large tree which fell across the road near Chester House, the residence of Mr. N. T. Whitworth, between Rushden and Wellingborough, blocked all traffic until it was removed on Tuesday morning.  Buses and other vehicles had to go through Irchester via Gypsy-lane.

  A number of tiles were blown off the roof of the Rectory Farm house in Newton-road.  Opposite the farm, two new houses had about half of their ridge tiles removed by the gale.  A nearby fowl-house lost part of its corrugated iron roofing, which the owner next day recovered some distance away on the other side of the road.

  On the Court Estate, Rushden, a straw stack was blown over and distributed about the road and fields.

  An acacia tree at Rushden Hall, the residence of Mr. A. H. Sartoris, J.P., C.C., snapped in the middle, and the upper half was hurled into an old and majestic yew tree, which was split almost from top to bottom.

  At the Prince of Wales, Little Irchester, a chimney stack crashed through the roof, leaving a big hole, and in Irchester a chimney-pot was hurled through the roof of a cottage.

  At Wymington, on Monday night, one of the walls of Abbott’s Cottages crashed outwards on to a small building underneath.  Had it fallen the other way, it would have crashed through a bedroom ceiling on to a child of three years of age, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. F. Parker, who were downstairs at the time.  No one was hurt, but a push-car in the small building was damaged.

  One or two thatched cottages at Wymington and Irchester suffered through parts of the thatching being carried away by the wind.

  During the gale of Monday evening a large fowlhouse on the Stanwick top road was blown completely over a wall 11 ft. high.  Many of the fowls were killed, but about 35 were caught and rehoused.

  At Irthlingborough a woman was severely cut about the head by a falling slate.