1580 Dover Straits earthquake

Magnitude 5 earthquake affecting England and France

Though severe earthquakes in the north of France and Britain are rare, the 1580 Dover Straits earthquake appears to have been one of the largest in the recorded history of England, Flanders or northern France. Its effects started to be felt in London at around six o'clock in the evening of 6 April 1580, being Wednesday in the Easter week.

Farther from the coast, furniture danced on the floors and wine casks rolled off their stands. The belfry of Notre Dame de Lorette and several buildings at Lille collapsed. Stones fell from buildings in Arras, Douai, Béthune and Rouen. Windows cracked in the cathedral of Notre Dame at Pontoise, and blocks of stone dropped ominously from the vaulting. At Beauvais, the bells rang as though sounding the tocsin. Many deaths were reported from Saint Amand les Eaux. There was damage far inland, in Cambridgeshire, where stones fell from Ely Cathedral. Part of Stratford Castle in Essex collapsed. In Scotland, a local report of the quake disturbed the adolescent James VI, who was informed that it was the work of the Devil. There were aftershocks. Before dawn the next morning, between 4 and 5 o'clock, further houses collapsed near Dover due to aftershocks, and a spate of further aftershocks was noticed in east Kent on 1–2 May.

198 years earlier there was a very similar event, the magnitude 5.8–6.0 1382 Dover Straits earthquake, with an estimated epicentre not far from that estimated for the 1580 event. Two later quakes in the Dover Strait, in 1776 and 1950, both thought to be around magnitude 4, were noted in the 1984 compilation by R. M. W. Musson, G. Neilson and P. W. Burton. None in this study occurred before 1727, but the same team devoted an article to the 1580 earthquake that year. The 2007 Kent earthquake was initially thought to have occurred in the Dover Straits, but later analysis showed it to have occurred directly under the town of Folkestone in Kent.