‘The dreadful catastrophe that happened at Asterton’: a hurricane or an avalanche in Shropshire?

ABSTRACT

This paper reconstructs the course of an event that happened at Asterton in south Shropshire in the late eighteenth century which at the time was attributed to a hurricane. Having reviewed the surviving evidence, in particular a contemporary account written by Reverend Edward Rogers as well as the coroner’s inquisition report, newspaper articles, historic meteorological data, and the physical landscape, it will be argued that it was in all probability an avalanche rather than a hurricane. The causes and effects of avalanches which regularly occur in mountainous areas like the French and Swiss Alps are well understood, having long attracted the attention of physical geographers. However, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries relatively little was known about these natural phenomena. Travellers often noted observing avalanches and contemporaries published accounts of them such as that which occurred at Bergemoletto in the Italian Alps in 1755. The interpretation of the event at Asterton as a hurricane illustrates how the understanding of avalanches as well as other natural phenomena was developing in the eighteenth century.

Keywords:

• Avalanche
• hurricane
• landscape
• snow
• weather

Acknowledgements

This paper is an outcome of a three-year project ‘Spaces of experience and horizons of expectation: the implications of extreme weather events, past, present and future’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through grant number AH/K005782/1. Mike Nurse provided a copy of his article, photographs of the account of Edward Rogers and advice as to the location of the hollow. He also commented on a draft of the paper. Julie M. Preston provided photographs and a transcription of the account of Edward Rogers in her possession. Anthony Theobald provided a copy of the South West Shropshire Historical and Archaeological Society journal for 2015. I am grateful to Giles Carey, Historic Environment Record Officer at Shropshire Council for providing LiDAR data and drawing the maps, Tim Legg for his explanation of the Central England Temperature Series and Andreas Berz of the Swiss National Library for drawing my attention to works relating to the history of avalanches in Switzerland. I would like to thank Professor Simon Naylor for commenting on a draft of the paper and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful suggestions.