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Original poster

What do you remember from 15th October 1987????? The night of the great storm in SE ENGLAND.

71 replies

RTKangaMummy · 15/10/2007 18:05

I was working in NW London as a nanny and the bins and stuff was thrown about outside

my parents in East Sussex lost fence panels and roof tiles

All the trees on the railway in East Sussex and Kent

What do you remember?

Where were you?

.

OP posts:
kid · 15/10/2007 19:39

I was at home in East London and I slept through the whole thing. I was desperate to go to school as I wanted to see how much damage had been done. My mum made me stay at home instead.

DarrellRivers · 15/10/2007 19:42

I was 14 and in EAst Surrey.
Our chickens had their roof blown off in the night but they all stayed in their hutch.
My school ( had a several mile long drive) lost an entire avenue of trees probably about 10 on each side.
Meant we couldn't get to school that day.
However all the poor boarders were still there and had to have lessons

lapsedrunner · 15/10/2007 19:57

I was in Bordon, Hampshire. We had a dinner night that evening and at about midnight I took the dog out for a pee, it was strangely calm and warm. Thought nothing of it, went back in & joined the throng at the bar....more alcohol.
We all slept though it, a colleague woke up to find a large pine tree through his bedroom window but hadn't heard a thing!

scampadoodle · 15/10/2007 19:58

I was 22 & at college in North London. That night I wasn't very well & took a dose of NightNurse. The last thing I remember before I conked out was thinking, "that shed door's banging a bit!"
The next morning - after 12 hours solid sleep - I went downstairs to find all my housemates still home & an eerie calm outside. They tried to kid me there'd been a nuclear attack: I think I actually believed them for about 5 minutes (must've been the NightNurse...)

choosyfloosy · 15/10/2007 20:06

I was in Sevenoaks. Slept through the whole thing. On the day after discovered large tree fallen in garden, and we listened to Radio Kent which we only ever did in times of emergency. Mum and I drove off extra early to go to work in Croydon, and it took us about 2 hours to find an unblocked route in. We arrived a bit late to find that people living a few minutes down the road had rung up to say it was impossible for them to get in - yeah right, frankly. I wd have done the same though without Mum's influence [Dunkirk spirit - wartime generation - saucers in fridge - heating never on etc]. Routes home that day were terrifying. The road out of Seal in particular, normally fringed with huge beeches, entirely flattened. Knole Park devastated.

I remember the replanting of the seven oaks a few weeks/months later (plus the re-replanting after the replacement ones were vandalised within 24 hours )

V interesting article about what was learned from it in field of conservation in Sunday's paper - basically, leave it alone and it all regenerates beautifully. Obvious really.

scampadoodle · 15/10/2007 20:11

Lol at 'saucers in fridge'. My mother's fridge is a minefield of tiny spoonfuls of things on china saucers which attack you every time you open the door. She tries to do the same thing when she stays with us - drives me potty.

pigletmaker · 15/10/2007 21:29

i slept thru it but was astonished by all the crushed cars out on the street the next day (and bits of tree of course)

dinny · 15/10/2007 21:32

dh lost his virginity, lol

harman · 15/10/2007 21:35

Message withdrawn

Smellmel · 15/10/2007 21:37

The following day my grandad was buried. Very surreal with trees etc. everywhere. My mum took mt DS 18 months to grandads grave this week emotional time as DS named after grandad just sad they didn't meet.

Spiderhammer · 15/10/2007 21:37

I slept through the whole thing too but remember all the trees down in the morning in Brockwell Park in Brixton and everything looked messy and dishevelled. Leaves and branches strewn across roads.

Meid · 15/10/2007 21:41

I was in Kent and got up and went out at 6am to do my paper round. Lost count of the number of trees I had to climb over to get to the newsagents. Almost all of the paper boys and girls had made it in - one with a crash helmet on because there had been tiles falling off his roof. We clearly all took our jobs seriously!

Lilymaid · 15/10/2007 21:44

DS1 was a baby and slept through it all. I went out that evening (lived in Berkshire) and thought it was very windy (but we weren't really warned how bad it was going to be). You couldn't get anywhere the next day for fallen trees. But it wasn't actually as bad as the storm in January 1990 when I remember my neighbour's plastic corrugated lean to roof breaking up and blowing around the road in the wind - would have severely injured anyone who was out there at the time.

Posey · 15/10/2007 21:46

It was my first day at nursing college. 200 miles from home in a Victorian nurses home in Whitechapel. Windows smashing, alarms going off.... quite a start to college life!

Megsdaughter · 15/10/2007 21:53

A huge tree came down opposite my front window it land 6 inches from the glass, and I stood there and watched it happen, like a rabbit in head lights, !!!!

sibble · 16/10/2007 01:40

Posey, our paths have probably crossed, I was in the block of nursing flats in Philpot Street. Purple - 1986 (I think from memory)

choklit · 16/10/2007 06:59

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Tommy · 16/10/2007 07:51

I slept through it!

In fact, my flatmate and I slept through the alarm as well that day and out landlady came in to wake us up and tell us that there was not electricity.
We walked into college through Richmond Park and looked at all the damage and couldn't elieve we hadn't heard anything!

Elasticbandstand · 16/10/2007 07:54

well i had been to a beer festival (those were the days) and consquently slept through it, apart from one moment whn current BF asked if i had left the windows open agian as they were rattling!

we were in london and i remember the trees planted in tottenham court road had broken, breaking the paving slabs, nothign major though.

my dm in east sussex had no electricity for 2 weeks.

heifer · 16/10/2007 08:04

I missed it!

I was on holiday in Bermuda visiting my brother, and the odd thing is that they had had a big hurrican a few weeks before so I felt very lucky that I had in fact missed both...

Was quite a shock seeing the devastation over there, only to return home and see it here, although wasn't so bad in North Wilts...

Was it really that long ago that I had such a brilliant holiday....

Charlee · 16/10/2007 08:27

Nothing i was only 6 months old!

A tree did fall through my bedroom window though and my mum rescude me just in time from my cot!

sweetbean · 16/10/2007 08:43

God i remember it we had a massive oak tree in are garden and it fell down. the power was out for 2 Weeeks and we didn't have to go to school for a week!!!!! that i was amazing i was 8 and i lived in Surrey

Posey · 16/10/2007 13:47

Sibble, you must have been in the posher nurses home you got moved to after you'd been there a while. Mine was very old, very basic, very Victorian inside and out!!
I was at the London til 1997. What about you?

Meglet · 16/10/2007 14:49

all the trees in the playing field behind our house fell down and we made some ace camps - tunnels and everything! out of the smaller branches before the mean men from the council cleared it all up - boo hiss.

Soph73 · 16/10/2007 14:49

I was at boarding school in East Sussex in a dormitory with 7 other girls & slept through the whole thing. Woke up to find 100 yr old oak tree poking through dormitory ceiling. I was a very sound sleeper at 14