John Shipley
The Yorkshire farm worker who was only metres away when the Wold Cottage meteorite landed in December 1795.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Field
- Farm labourer
Very little is known about John Shipley's life, but his few minutes in history were remarkable. He was working in a field at Wold Cottage, near Wold Newton in Yorkshire, on the afternoon of 13 December 1795 when a stone plunged out of the sky close to where he stood.
According to the statements gathered afterwards by the landowner, Edward Topham, Shipley heard explosions in the air and saw the stone strike the ground, throwing up earth around him. It had buried itself deep in the soil and into the chalk beneath. Shipley and others dug it out. It was still warm, and it weighed about 25 kilograms.
Other people nearby had heard the noise and seen something dark rush through the air, and their accounts agreed with his. Because the fall happened in daylight, close to a reliable witness, and left a single large stone in a hole that could be inspected, it became one of the most convincing cases of its time.
Shipley's testimony was printed and displayed when Topham exhibited the stone in London, and it was read by the scholars who were then arguing about whether stones could fall from the sky. Within a decade the question was settled. Shipley's experience is a reminder that the science of meteorites has always depended on ordinary people reporting carefully what they saw.
On the timeline
- 13 December 1795The Wold Cottage stone lands in Yorkshire