Impact
Further from the coast, furniture danced on the floors and wine casks rolled off their stands. The belfry of Notre Dame de Lorette and several buildings at Lille collapsed. Stones fell from buildings in Arras, Douai, Béthune and Rouen. Windows cracked in the cathedral of Notre Dame at Pontoise, and blocks of stone dropped ominously from the vaulting. At Beauvais the bells rang as though sounding the tocsin.
In Flanders chimneys fell and cracks opened in the walls of Ghent and Oudenarde. Peasants in the fields reported a low rumble and saw the ground roll in waves.
On the English coast, sections of wall fell in Dover and a landslip opened a raw new piece of the White Cliffs. At Sandwich a loud noise emanated from the Channel, as church arches cracked and the gable end of a transept fell at St Peter's Church. In Hythe, Kent, Saltwood Castle — made famous as the site where the plot was hatched in December 1170 to assassinate Thomas Becket — was rendered uninhabitable until it was repaired in the 19th century.
In London, half a dozen chimney stacks came down and a pinnacle on Westminster Abbey; two children were killed by stones falling from the roof of Christ's Church Hospital. Indeed the many Puritans blamed the emerging theatre scene of the time in London, which was seen as the work of the devil, as a cause of the quake. There was damage far inland, in Cambridgeshire; stones fell from the Ely Cathedral. Part of Stratford Castle in Essex collapsed.
In Scotland, local report of the quake disturbed the adolescent James VI, who was informed that it was the work of the Devil.
There were aftershocks. Before dawn the next morning, between 4 and 5 o'clock further houses collapsed near Dover due to aftershocks, and spate of further aftershocks were noticed in east Kent on 1–2 May.
Read more about this topic: 1580 Dover Straits Earthquake
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