Tropical Whirlwind at Rushden

HEAVY SHED LIFTED BODILY AND FLUNG DOWN

IRON SHEETS FLOATED LIKE PAPER - MYSTERY OF THE BLACK OATS

  Exclusively reported in The Rushden Echo last week, the whirlwind which crossed from the “Wymington Hedges,” on the south-west border of Bencroft Farm, to Higham Park was of a kind rarely known outside tropical zones. It left its track marked out behind it in an unmistakable line only a few feet wide. This was most visible across a field of mangel-wurzels on Bencroft Farm fronting the Bedford road. A Rushden Echo reporter visited the field and saw the damage, which would seem incredible from such a cause, but is undeniably the result of the whirlwind. As is well known, the greater part of a mangel-wurzel, leaves and solid oval part, grows clear of the ground, but the fibrous root is anything to six inches in the soil. Consequently it requires an appreciable amount of “pull” to draw the root from the ground. The suction and forward “drive” of the whirlwind were so great as to pull scores of the roots clean out of the ground and lay them low – all pointing in one direction, that of the path of the whirlwind. At one spot, where the whirlwind seems to have stopped for a few moments in its forward progress but to have had an even stronger lifting force, it pulled out all the roots from a patch of ground roughly ten feet in diameter.  At about this point, too, the whirlwind crossed a hedge diagonally.  The lighter boughs and undergrowth at the bottom of the hedge were practically stripped out, leaving several yards as if the hedge there had been artificially trimmed.

  Crossing the Bedford road, the whirlwind moved across Mr. Hodgkins’s smallholding.  Luckily the bungalow itself was not in a direct line or the corrugated-iron roof might have been lifted.  The whirlwind here became erratic in its forward course.  It did damage at the Bedford end of Bencroft Cottages and on Mr. Hodgkins’s land, but it seems to have missed the line between the cottages and the bungalow.  At the cottages an ordinary water-barrel stood near the end wall and was full of water.  The barrel was flung over and rolled along for 10 or 15 yards.  The water-spout and the roof immediately above where the barrel had stood were damaged.

  The most remarkable damage was on Mr. Hodgkins’s premises.  A pear tree standing near the back door had half its boughs wrenched off, the base of the biggest bough at the top of the trunk being five or six inches in diameter.  A few yards further on was a shed built of heavy wood piles and a red-tiled roof.  It was completely demolished, and the appearances suggest that the shed was lifted, twisted, and flung down.  The roof woodwork and tiles were smashed, but the wood piles were intact, though loosened, having to be put into the ground again.  A quantity of faggots was stacked near the hedge on the Rushden side of the bungalow.  They were not in a direct line, but the whirlwind caught hold on one bundle and carried it 30 yards away, where it was stopped by a fence.  Several sheets of new corrugated iron lying on the ground near the demolished shed were lifted into the air and floated off like sheets of paper – two fields away!   Perhaps the most remarkable effect of the whirlwind was the fact of its lifting bodily a hen-roost (an old cab minus the wheels, and consequently solid and heavy) over a 5 ft. fence and carrying it, most of the way apparently in the air, right across a ploughed field some hundreds of yards.  A high hedge stopped its further careering – and it was not by any means broken.  A sack of potatoes from somewhere near was lifted or rolled for a similar distance.  The sheaf of black oats which found its way on to Messrs. Holt Bros.’ farm at Higham Park remains a mystery, as none of the neighbouring farms had such a crop.  Part of a stack of white oats from Mr. Hodgkins’s smallholding was carried away, and a hen was killed, but, beyond the demolition of the shed, there was no serious damage.  The whole occurrence lasted but a few minutes.

  Messrs. Holt. Bros.’ farm buildings were not in the line of the whirlwind as it crossed in the direction of Newton Bromshold. The farm premises are in a hollow formed by the fall of the land from the Court Estate, and it was across the rising slope on the south of the farm that the whirlwind was traced. It tore off the tops of two large trees, and the line along which it was then moving was a succession of ploughed and open fields, and the whirlwind seems to have spent itself before it could reach anything else that was movable.

  Mr. Whittemore, sen., of Bencroft Farm, who is nearly 80 years of age, says he has never known or heard of anything like the whirlwind in his life.

Transcribed by Gill Hollis