Late-night earthquake shakes the UK

Buildings wobbled and the ground rumbled after an earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale shook neighbouring counties in the UK.

Residents were woken up and sent scurrying outside when the tremor struck just before 11pm in Coniston, Cumbria yesterday, lasting for up to a minute.

It was felt in places across the county and as far away as Lancashire, south-west Scotland, Northumberland and the Isle of Man. No damage or injuries have yet been reported.

Peter Kelly, owner of the Yewdale Hotel in Coniston, said: “We felt the earthquake. It probably lasted about 30 seconds. It was quite noticeable.

“We were just closing up the bar with a few residents in and we just felt like a bang and then a rumbling but we couldn’t decide what it was.

“There’s no damage but there was a heavy rumbling.”

Hotelier Alan Robertson, who was in his 30-bed hotel in Eskdale, near Whitehaven, described how the entire building shook.

“I was watching TV and there was this sort of really loud rumble. Then the entire building shook,” he said.

“I ran out of the front door, only to be confronted by my guests running out of their part of the house. We couldn’t believe it.”

The 36 year old, who had six guests at the Bower House Inn including a pregnant women, added: “The tremor must have last 15 or 20 seconds.

“It was sizeable enough to shake an old and well-established building.

“If I lived in a city, I would have assumed it was an explosion.”

“I am still in shock. I can barely get my thoughts together.”

Karen Dickinson, of North Lancashire, told Sky News: “It was just a real herd of rumbling, which sounded like thunder.

“The furniture started shaking in the house. The children were upstairs playing on the Wii and came running down. They were quite scared.

“We didn’t realise what it was. We thought perhaps it was some kind of explosion. Then we assumed it was an earth tremor.

Data from the British Geological Survey (BGS) showed the location of the quake at Coniston, with a depth of 14.3km (8.9 miles). The rumble was also flagged up by the US Geological Survey.

BGS Head of Seismology Dr Brian Baptie said: “We get an earthquake of this size somewhere in the UK roughly every 12-18 months. Damage is very unlikely.

“An earthquake of this size and depth might be felt up to 80-100 km away. The earthquake has probably made windows and doors rattle and small objects might have been displaced.”

Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary said the force also had reports of people feeling a tremor in Dalbeattie.

The area appears prone to earthquakes at this time of year.

Dumfries in Scotland suffered a tremor measuring 3.5 on Boxing Day in 2006, with hundreds of people in the area reporting their houses shook violently.

Seismologists said the tremor, which lasted around 10 seconds, was the largest in the UK that year.

Susan Potter, geophysicist at the US Geological Society, said that in the last 40 years, six earthquakes had been recorded within 50km of last night’s quake.

Of those two have been of a magnitude of 3.7 – in 1988 and 2009.

“This general region has had earthquakes of the same magnitude in the past,” Ms Potter said.

Other recent quakes in the UK include one in February 2008, when a major tremor centred on Lincolnshire shook much of the UK, causing damage to buildings and leaving at least one person injured.

The tremor – which measured 5.2 on the Richter scale – struck at around 1am on February 27 at Market Rasen, Lincs.

And in Kent in April 2007, another tremor measured 4.3 on the Richter scale.

Homes were damaged as chimneys toppled, walls cracked and masonry fell as the tremor hit Folkestone, Kent.