| THE financial aftershocks of the February earthquake, the biggest in the UK for 24 years, are still being felt. The Ecclesiastical Insurance Group says that it is dealing with about 40 claims relating to earthquake damage, costing an estimated £800,000.
One of the largest claims relates to St Patrick’s, in Patrington, near Hull — 20 miles away from the epicentre of the earthquake that hit Market Rasen, in Lincolnshire. The church is likely to be under scaffolding well into next year.
The earthquake shook the 189-foot spire of the Gothic church, which Sir John Betjeman described as sailing “like a galleon of stone over the wide, flat expanse of Holderness”.
The earthquake, which measured 5.2 on the Richter scale, caused an estimated £200,000 worth of damage to the spire, turning the top five degrees off its axis.
Steeplejacks who examined the church discovered a fracture through the spire, effectively detaching the top 12 feet. The tremor also shook the church’s corona — the area at the base of the spire — causing one of its 16 stone pinnacles to fall off, and severely damaging another.
The Revd Duncan Harris, Vicar of St Patrick’s, said that when the earthquake hit, he thought that his gas boiler had exploded. “It was only when the steeplejacks went up that the full scale of the damage became apparent.
“People say that an earthquake is an act of God; I believe in this case it was an act of God that nobody was hurt and that no greater damage was done. If the top four or five metres of the spire had come down, it would have destroyed the chancel, causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage to the church.
“The cockerel sitting on top of the spire is as big as a donkey. If anyone had been anywhere near to that — well, you just dread to think what would have happened.” The church was closed for three weeks after the earthquake, but services have since resumed as usual.
Repair work cannot begin immediately because obtaining permission from the various authorities involved in the church, including English Heritage, will take time. Stonemasons who work at St Paul’s Cathedral are unlikely to be available until next year.
The earthquake was felt as far afield as Bangor in Northern Ireland, Haarlem in Holland, Plymouth, and Edinburgh.
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