The tiny hamlet of Buttercrambe in North Yorkshire was the epicentre of a 2.6-magnitude earthquake earlier this week, one of the biggest to hit the UK this year. The quake struck on October 12 at around 10.42am at a depth of 23km, with the exact centre point being a field just behind Aldby Park, a popular wedding venue. No damage or injuries have been reported so far.
Historic Horse Racing Site
Buttercrambe, situated on a bend of the River Derwent, is most famous as the ancestral home of the Darley Arabian – one of the three foundation stallions of modern Thoroughbred horse racing. The conditions of the quake would make it almost impossible to race or train a horse, ironically, at the historic location.
Ongoing Tremor Investigations
This comes after a probe was revealed into why a Brit village has been hit by 25 earthquakes in a year. Seismologists are monitoring the coastal settlement of Silverdale, Lancs, after it was bombarded by a blitz of earth tremors powerful enough to make beds shake.
More than two dozen have registered on the Richter scale - which measures quake strength - in the past 12 months with the most recent on September 21. The biggest – last December – had a 3.2 magnitude and was felt by folk living 12 miles away. CCTV footage showed cameras shaking, lights flickering and sleeping dogs jumping out of their baskets.
Andrew Smith said his house in the Morecambe Bay parish was left quaking. “I was upstairs just sorting out some stuff and all of a sudden, there was this almighty crash,” he said. “I thought something had hit the house or exploded somewhere.”
Smith said he was concerned the tremor was not just a one-off. “It does seem to be a continuing theme,” he said. “There is always that concern. Will there be worse ones? It is obviously a concern. You don't expect that sort of thing. It wasn't on our list when we were looking for a property: ‘Avoid an earthquake zone!’”
Fellow villager Tom Bradfield said he had felt tremors on more than one occasion. “The first one I thought a truck had crashed into our house,” he told the BBC. “The bed was shaking upstairs. The dog woke up.”
What Causes the Quakes
According to the British Geological Survey quakes are caused by the sudden release of built-up stress and energy in the Earth's crust most often driven by the movement of tectonic plates which constantly drift over the planet’s mantle beneath.
