What was the Glatton meteorite?
Glatton is a stony meteorite that fell into a garden in Cambridgeshire, England, on 5 May 1991, the last British fall recovered before Winchcombe in 2021.
On 5 May 1991, a retired man named Arthur Pettifor was working in his garden in the village of Glatton, near Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, when he heard a whistling sound and saw something fall into a hedge nearby. He searched and found a warm stone, partly buried, weighing about 767 grams.
Confirmation. The stone was taken to the Natural History Museum in London, where scientists confirmed it was a meteorite. It is an L6 ordinary chondrite, with a black fusion crust and a pale grey interior.
Rarity. Glatton was the first recovered meteorite fall in Great Britain since Barwell in Leicestershire, which fell on Christmas Eve 1965; Bovedy had fallen in Northern Ireland in 1969. After Glatton, Britain had to wait 30 years for the next recovered fall, Winchcombe, in February 2021.
No fireball reports. Unusually, there were few reports of a fireball associated with the Glatton fall, perhaps because it fell during the day, around midday, when the sky was bright.
Significance. Glatton shows that meteorites can land anywhere, even in an ordinary garden, and that observant people can make important discoveries. It also illustrates how rare British falls are: only a couple of dozen recovered falls are known from the whole of Britain and Ireland over more than two centuries.
Today. The main mass is held in the Natural History Museum's collection in London.