3-071-082 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Great Storm of Wind on Friday week: old chestnut in Greenwich Park, blown down, 1881. 'The south of England, and especially the country a hundred miles round London, with the metropolitan district itself, seem to have felt its extreme violence; and a vast amount of damage has been done to buildings and plantations, while many persons, in different parts of the country, and a few in London, lost their lives from various injuries...The gale was destructive in its effects upon the trees in the Metropolitan Parks. Some were uprooted, and all were nearly stripped of their autumnal foliage...Several persons sustained severe contusions from the flying branches. In Greenwich Park twenty-three large trees, principally elms, were blown down, and about the same number of small trees. From St. Mary's Gate to the Broad Walk six large elms were down, and in the Broad Walk itself one large elm completely blocked the way. It was in the Green Walk, a little to the east of the Royal Observatory, that the greatest damage was done. Within a space of 200 yards in circumference not a tree was left standing. There were lying about in a heap six elms and one large chestnut, the girth of whose trunk was not less than twenty feet at the base'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.