Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

The weather here in this part of the country has been exceeding wet and cold, insomuch that it seemed rather to have been spring than midsummer. Yet, for all that, Monday was pretty warm, on the afternoon of which day, about two of the clock, no wind stirring below, though it seemed somewhat great in the air, the clouds begun to be mightily agitated and driven together, whereupon they became very black, and were most visibly hurried round, as in a circle, whence proceeded a most audible whirling noise like that commonly heard in a mill. After a while, a long tube or pipe came down from the centre of the congregated clouds, in which was most plainly beheld a swift, spiral motion, like that of a screw, or the Archimedes screw when it is in motion. It travelled slowly from west to north east, broke down a great oak tree or two, frighted the weeders out of the field, and made others lie down flat upon their bellies to save being whirled about and killed by it, as they saw many jackdaws to be, that were suddenly catched up, carried out of sight, and then cast a great way off among the corn. At last it passed over the town of Hatfield, to the great terror of the inhabitants, filling the whole air with the thatch that it plucked off from some of the houses; then, touching upon a corner of the church, it tore up several sheets of lead, and rolled them strangely together. Soon after which it dissolved and vanished, without doing any further mischief.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

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Original

[To Hans Sloane]

Thorn, June 26, 1703

‘Tis some time ago that I sent you an account of a spout that myself and many others saw in Hatfield parish in 1685, with some few conjectures upon the cause of it. Since that time I have been so happy as to see another in the same place, which very much confirms me in my notion of the nature and origin of them. The weather here in this part of the country hath been exceeding wet and cold, insomuch that it seemed rather to have been spring than midsummer. Yet, for all that, Monday, the 21st ditto, was pretty warm, on the afternoon of which day, about two of the clock, no wind stirring below, though it seemed somewhat great in the air, the clouds begun to be mightily agitated and driven together, whereupon they became very black, and were most visibly hurried round, as in a circle, whence proceeded a most audible whirling noise like that commonly heard in a mill. After a while, a long tube or pipe came down from the centre of the congregated clouds, in which was most plainly beheld a swift, spiral motion, like that of a screw, or the Cochlea Archimedis [Archimedes’ screw] when it is in motion, by which spiral nature and swift turning water ascends up into the one as well as into the other. It travelled slowly from west to north east, broke down a great oak tree or two, frighted the weeders out of the field, and made others lie down flat upon their bellies to save being whirled about and killed by it, as they saw many jackdaws to be, that were suddenly catched up, carried out of sight, and then cast a great way off amongst the corn. At last it passed over the town of Hatfield, to the great terror of the inhabitants, filling the whole air with the thatch that it plucked off from some of the houses; then, touching upon a corner of the church, it tore up several sheets of lead, and rolled them strangely together. Soon after which it dissolved and vanished, without doing any further mischief.

There was nothing more extraordinary in this than in the other that I gave you a former account of, and, by all the observation that I could make of both of them, I found that, had they been at sea, and joined to the surface thereof, they would have carried a vast quantity water into the clouds, and the tubes would then have become more dense, and opaque, and strong, than they were, and have continued much longer.

It is commonly says that at sea the water collects and bubbles up a foot or two high under those spouts before that they be joined; but the mistake lies in the pellucidity and fineness of those pipes, which do most certainly touch the surface of the sea before that any considerable motion be made in it, and that then when the pipe begins to fill with water it then becomes opaque and visible.

As for the reason of their small continuance and dissolving of themselves, after that they have drunk up a great quantity of water, I take it to be by and through the great quantity of water, that they have carried up, which must needs thicken the clouds and impede their motion, and by that means dissolve the pipes.

582 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Archimedes’ screw (1) ·
• 📌Doncaster (34) ·
• Hatfield, South Yorkshire (5) ·
• Jackdaw (1) ·
• Oak (3) ·
• Pryme, Abraham de la (1671-1704) (13), Yorkshire antiquary and curate born to Huguenots: a Dutch-speaking father from Ypres and a Parisian mother ·
• Quercus robur (1) ·
• Sloane, Hans (1660-1753) (1), Anglo-Irish physician, naturalist, and collector, whose collection provided the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library, and the Natural History Museum; possible inventor of drinking chocolate ·
• 📌Thorne (4), market town and civil parish near Doncaster ·
• Watermill (5) ·
• Weather (4) ·
• Weed control (1) ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (147) ·
• Whirlwind (1) ·
• Wind (3) ·

All tags.

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