January 5

Posted by sydney on Jan 5th, 2009
  • 1791: January 5, 1791 – The great oak in Harteley avenue, just as you enter the pasture-field, measures in girth 14 feet.  It is a noble tree, & if sound worth many pounds.  Why it was left at the general sale does not appear.  The girth was taken at four feet above the ground.
  • 1789: January 5, 1789 – Turner’s well-diggers advance slowly through the blue rag. Mr Churton left us, & went to Waverly.
  • 1786: January 5, 1786 – The fierce drifting of wednesday proved very injurious to houses, forcing the snow in to roofs, & flooding the ceilings.  The roads also are so blocked with drifting snow that the coaches cannot pass.  The Winton coach was overturned yesterday near Alresford.
  • 1785: January 5, 1785 – Brother Thomas left us.
  • 1772: January 5, 1772 – Hedge-sparrow whistles: paths get dry.  An extraordinary concussion in the air which shook peoples windows, & doors round the neighbourhood.  Note:  The concussion felt Jan. 5 was occasioned by the blowing-up of the powder-mills near Hounslow.  Incredible damage was done in that neighbourhood.

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Notes:

The explosions of the gunpowder mills at Hounslow inconvenienced no less a person than Horace Walpole, whose decorative glass windows were shattered. He wrote a droll letter to his cousin, Lieutenant General of the Ordnance:
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“You have read of my calamity without knowing it, and will pity me when you do. I have been blown up; my castle is blown up; Guy Fawkes has been about my house; and the fifth of november has fallen on the 6th [sic] of January! In short, nine thousand powder-mills broke loose yesterday morning on Hounslow-heath; … As lieutenant-general of the ordnance, I must beseech you to give strict orders that no more powder-mills may blow up… and would recommend to your consideration, whether it would not be prudent to have all magazines of powder kept under water till they are wanted for service. In the meantime, I expect a pension to make me amends for what I have suffered under the governments.”

and another to a Lady Ossory:

“Margaret [the housekeeper] sits by the waters of Babylon and weeps over Jerusalem. Yet she was not taken quite unprepared, for one of the Bantam hens had crowed on Sunday morning, and the chandler’s wife told her three weeks ago, when the Barn was blown down, that ill-luck never came single. She is, however, very thankful that the china-room has escaped, and says God has always been the best creature in the world to her.”

“Blue rag” is a limestone layer; see the general note for January 3.

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