Howardites
Meteorites of Britain and Ireland · England

The Hatford meteorite

A shower of stones in 1628, announced by bangs like cannon fire, of which not a single piece was kept.

Key facts

Fell
9 April 1628
Where
Hatford, in the Vale of White Horse (then Berkshire, now Oxfordshire)
Type
Stone, never classified
Mass
about 29 kg reported; nothing survives
Where it is kept
Lost. No specimen survives.
Nation today
England

At about five in the afternoon on 9 April 1628, people around Hatford in the Vale of White Horse heard a series of reports like cannon fire, followed by rushing and whirring sounds. Several stones fell across the parish and nearby. The largest, according to the accounts, weighed about 9 kilograms and was dug out of the ground where it had buried itself.

Witnesses described the stones as blackish on the outside, as if crusted, and paler inside. That is exactly how a fresh stony meteorite looks: the dark outer layer is the fusion crust, formed when the surface melted during its fall through the air. A letter written soon afterwards, and the descriptions of the stones, are why Hatford is accepted as a genuine fall.

As with Stretchleigh, nothing was preserved. The total weight reported, about 29 kilograms, would make Hatford one of the larger falls in British history, but it can never be checked or classified. It is listed in the catalogue simply as an unclassified stone.

Did you know?

Did you know?

The black crust the witnesses described is the fusion crust that forms on every meteorite in the last seconds of its flight.

Did you know?

The village was in Berkshire in 1628 and moved to Oxfordshire in the county changes of 1974.

Find out more

Nearest other British and Irish meteorites