The most important damage occurred in the city of Hereford, which, in
1901, contained 4,565 inhabited houses. Here, no fewer than 218
chimneys had to be repaired or rebuilt. The Cathedral was slightly
injured. The finial of a pinnacle of the Lady Chapel was thrown down,
a fragment of a stone fell from one of the arches in the south
transept, and the three pinnacles of the western front were fractured.
Several churches suffered to a similar extent, while, at the Midland
Railway Station, all the seven chimney-stacks were shattered. At
Dinedor, Fownhope, Dormington, Withington, and a few other villages,
the damage was also relatively greater than elsewhere, these places
all lying within a small oval about 8-1/2 miles long, which surrounds,
not the centre, but rather the north-west focus, of the isoseismal 8.
The isoseismal 7, which includes places where the shock was strong
enough to overthrow ornaments, vases, etc., is also very nearly an
ellipse, whose axes are 80 and 56 miles in length, and whose area is
3,580 square miles. Its longer axis, running from W. 42° N. to E. 42°
S., is practically parallel to that of the inner curve. Next in
succession comes the isoseismal 6, surrounding those places where the
shock was strong enough to make chandeliers, pictures, etc., swing;
but, as most of the observers seem to have slept in darkened rooms,
the number of determining points for this curve is less than usual,
and its course is therefore laid down with a somewhat inferior degree
of accuracy. The error, however, is probably small, and we may
therefore regard the isoseismal 6 as another ellipse, 141 miles long,
116 miles broad, and containing an area of 13,000 square miles. Its
longer axis is again nearly parallel to those of the preceding
isoseismals.
The next two isoseismals are nearly circular in form. It will be
noticed that large portions of them, and especially of the isoseismal
4, traverse the sea. In these parts, the paths of the curves are to
some extent conjectural. In drawing them, the chief guides are their
trend before leaving the land and the known intensity along the
neighbouring coastlines. The isoseismal 5 bounds the area within which
the shock was perceptible as a sensible displacement and not merely a
quiver. Its dimensions are 233 miles from north-west to south-east,
and 229 miles from south-west to north-east, and its area 41,160
square miles. The isoseismal 4, which includes places where the shock
was strong enough to make doors, windows, etc., rattle, is 356 miles
from north-west to south-east, and 357 miles from south-west to
north-east, and 98,000 square miles in area; its centre coincides
nearly with that of the small oval area in the neighbourhood of
Hereford, where the damage to buildings was relatively greater than
elsewhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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