The Holloway Meteorite

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Distinguished historian Ruth Richardson explores an apocalyptic event that occurred in Holloway two hundred years ago this afternoon. Readers are advised that clear skies are forecast tonight and meteorite showers expected across London.

Near the site of the Holloway Meteorite

Examining The Portfolio – an obscure pre-Victorian periodical –  my eye strayed to this news column.

FALL OF A STONE FROM THE CLOUDS

“On Friday, the 13th August, at two o’clock precisely, a dreadful explosion took place at Mr. Spencer’s, the little white cottage, Phoebe Place, Holloway. The family, on being alarmed by a loud crash, rushed into the garden to ascertain whence the noise proceeded, and inquired of Mr. Berry, a gentleman of property in the neighbourhood, whether he had been making use of fire-arms for the purpose of destroying dogs? To which he replied in the negative: but smelling a most powerful effluvia of sulphur, they began to examine the spot from whence the smell proceeded, when they found, to their utter astonishment, a stone-like substance, still hot, smelling of sulphur, and of about half a yard in circumference. In its course towards Mr. Berry’s back kitchen, it most severely wounded a little girl who was passing; a milkman was struck blind, and a gardener much hurt. The aerolite is in Mr. Berry’s possession.”

Two hundred years ago, 1824, and on Friday the thirteenth!  When I explain that I live in Holloway, not far from the site, you will understand why I got side-tracked by this news. I had never heard of Phoebe Place and was certain there are no white cottages in Holloway today. The idea of a meteorite landing in Holloway was unbelievable and had to be investigated. Where was Phoebe Place? And what happened to the stone?

I started exploring. In the British Library’s map room, the splendid Tom Harper kindly enlarged a detail of Cruchley’s New Plan of London and its Environs, a beautiful map was created in 1827, soon after the meteorite’s fall. Phoebe Place stood in Nether Holloway, north of the hamlet of Highbury. The site has disappeared under the railway bridge which crosses the Holloway Road beside the tube station. The gardens surrounding the little white cottage at Phoebe Place were curtailed for the viaduct and, as more tracks were added overhead, the cottage was swallowed up. The site now lies underneath the arches.

I thought I might try researching the people injured in this freak event – the poor Holloway milkman blinded, the gardener ‘much hurt’ and the severely wounded little girl. Identifying nameless individuals in old news reports is notoriously difficult. Yet reports of people being injured by falling meteorites are extremely rare. A few of these rare events have occurred in mid-August, which is always the best time to observe shooting stars because the Perseid meteor showers peak between 12th and 13th  August every year. 

Nowhere could I find any record in meteoritic literature of human injuries in Holloway in the eighteen-twenties, nor could I trace what had happened to the meteorite itself. Surely a stone half a yard in circumference that fell from the sky would have been an object of keen curiosity?

Coming upon so many dead ends, I examined contemporary newspapers in the British Library’s database in case Mr Berry had donated the stone as an exhibit to a long-closed institution or a travelling circus. Instead, I found a slew of reports relating to the original event, all predating the report I had originally found in The Portfolio. It had mutations along the way in varying headlines and abridgements but each newspaper seemed to be reprinting essentially the same text.

Eventually, I turned up a primary source in the form of a letter from Mr Berry himself to the editor of the (long defunct) New Times, published on the 20th August 1824, within days of the first report.

Sir, An erroneous statement of an accident that happened at our house appearing in your paper, you will oblige me by giving the subsequent statement of the facts as they really happened.

I am, Sir, yours, &c. J.M.Berry

“On the 13th inst. about two o’clock in the day, a tremendous concussion took place at the back of the house. Upon recovering from the alarm, we found the lightning had struck the back stack of chimneys and wall of the house ; the kitchen was covered with soot, and full of a sulphureous smell. A young female servant, frightened, ran into the parlour to us, saying something had come out of the fire like a piece of red hot iron, which I suppose to have been the electric fluid, which then dashed into the wash house, and broke all the windows. Through mercy we were not any of us hurt ; but our milkman serving a customer on the opposite side of the road, was struck with the lightning, and remained blind a few minutes. He had recovered his sight, but still has a weakness in his eyes and back.”

Mr Berry’s correction had appeared in several newspapers though it did not prevent the story from having legs, nor does it seem to have reached the editor of The Portfolio, William Charlton Wright. Though I sense he might not have welcomed such a disclaimer, as he and his wife Ann not only made their living by recycling ‘periodical and established literature’, but they had a keen interest in oracular, apocalyptic, and prophetic subjects.

Records of their output show a preoccupation with otherworldly matters – astrology, prognostication, esoteric signs, portents, necromancy, sibylline readings, and fortune-telling. Spectacular large hand-coloured aquatints showing dramatic moments concerning mysterious ghostly or other-worldly events were a particular feature.

Wright also issued a beautifully illustrated edition of Oliver Goldsmith’s History of the Earth and Animated Nature which has a good chapter on atmospheric phenomena or ‘meteors’.  Another of Wright’s short-lived periodicals, The Straggling Astrologer, had as its epigraph ‘The Firmament Foretokens what Time Unfolds’, and his yearly almanack of weather and other prognostications was advertised as an ‘Annual Abstract of Celestial Lore’.

There was intense public interest in astronomical and astrological matters in the early nineteenth century and meteorites were just then being understood as extra-terrestrial bodies. The eighteen-twenties also witnessed the creation of John Martin’s apocalyptic canvases, as well as the formation of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Wright’s cosmic inclination perhaps explains why he preferred to give credence to a ‘stone from the clouds’ rather than to a domestic lightning strike, especially as he would likely have known that the event at Phoebe Place coincided with the annual peak of the Perseid meteor shower.  Yet he may not have been mistaken. Derek Sears, a meteorite researcher with a special interest in fall reports considers The Portfolio account likely to have been authentic: the event described may well have been a real meteorite fall, the ‘dreadful explosion’ being not thunder but a sonic boom.

As there were no reports of thunderstorms over north London on Friday the 13th, 1824, the mysterious event at the little white cottage at Phoebe Place remains unexplained.

Islington village and Ring Cross in the fields north of London proper in the seventeen-fifties. The star marks the site of Phoebe Cottage. (Courtesy A Hyett + A Dunning)

The site of Phoebe Place, Holloway Rd

Magic Ceremonies published by William Charlton Wright (Courtesy Wellcome Collection)

Necromancy published by William Charlton Wright (Courtesy British Museum)

With thanks to Brian Hurwitz, Derek Sears, Andrew Dunning, Andrew Hyett, John Harley Warner, The British Library – especially Tom Harper in the Map Room, Wellcome Collection, Tottenham Clouds, The Islington Society, Highgate Institution, Natasha Almeida at the Natural History Museum, Julie Melrose at Bruce Castle Museum, Dhara Patel at the National Space Centre, Sian Prosser at the Royal Astronomical Society, and Emily Inganni at the Met Office Archive.

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