The Ashdon meteorite
A stone seen to fall silently into an Essex field, dug up three days later from 60 centimetres down.
Key facts
- Fell
- 9 March 1923
- Where
- Ashdon, near Saffron Walden, Essex
- Type
- L6 ordinary chondrite
- Mass
- about 1.3 kg
- Where it is kept
- Natural History Museum, London
- Nation today
- England
Around one in the afternoon of 9 March 1923, a farm worker near Ashdon in north-west Essex saw a stone fall about 10 metres from him, without hearing any explosion. Three days later he returned with another man and dug it out from about 60 centimetres down. It weighed about 1.3 kilograms.
The silence is unusual but not unknown. Whether witnesses hear booms depends on where they stand relative to the meteoroid's path and on how high it broke apart.
Ashdon is an L6 ordinary chondrite. About a tenth of it is magnetic metal and sulphide. It was given to the Natural History Museum in London in 1923 and is still there.
Did you know?
Ashdon buried itself about 60 centimetres deep, typical of a stone this size falling at a few hundred kilometres per hour.
Its finder saw it land but heard no explosion at all.
Find out more
- Ashdon in the catalogue: the official class and recorded mass
- L chondrites: what this kind of meteorite is and where it comes from
- All the meteorites of Britain and Ireland, with a map
- Found something in the UK or Ireland? What to do next