Meteorite Interest Wold Cottage
£240
Auction: 24 October 2009 at 11:00 BST
Description
polished part slice
Dimensions
1.582g
Footnote
Provenance:
From the Robert Elliott Meteorite Collection - Part 2.
Wold Cottage (Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England) L6 (stone) - fell 13th December 1795:
This rare British meteorite fell in 1795, landing within two fields distance of a large house owned by one Edward Topham - a poet, playwright, landowner and well respected local magistrate who lived in The Wold Cottage, within the boundaries of a small village in Yorkshire named Wold Newton. Thanks to Magistrate Topham's efforts in always "establishing the truth", this meteorite became the major player in gaining Worldwide acceptance that stones do sometimes fall from the sky, and so confirming the witness reports of the Ensisheim fall 303 years earlier, and paving the way for the later L'Aigle fall in 1803.
During the afternoon of 13th December 1795, a thunderstorm was raging over Wold Newton, 10 miles outside the coastal town of Scarborough in Yorkshire, England. The peels of thunder and the flicker of lightning were dwarfed by a sudden, loud explosion which "alarmed the surrounding countryside and created so distinctly the sensation that something very singular had happened." Numerous people also saw a dark object passing through clouds but were unable to identify what it was. However, Topham's shepherd was within 150 yards of the impact and a farmhand named John Shipley was so near that he was forcibly struck by mud and earth as the falling meteorite burrowed into the ground. The stone penetrated through 1 foot of soil and embedded itself into the chalk bedrock to a depth of 7 inches, creating an impact pit over 1 yard across. The stone embedded itself so firmly into the bedrock that it had to be dug out. A monument was erected by Topham in 1799 and marks the exact spot where the meteorite landed.