Swanley History Group – October 2017 meeting
Was it a storm or was it a hurricane on the night of 16 October 1987? Swanley History Group members who experienced it had no doubt – it was a very damaging and alarming hurricane! Bob Ogley, our speaker at our October meeting, told us about his experiences of the event and how things changed for him afterwards. At that time he was editor of Sevenoaks Chronicle and living at Toys Hill above Westerham. His walk through the woods to his local pub would never be the same again as 90% of the woodlands growing for two hundred years and more were felled. There were huge craters where mighty oak and beech trees had stood. Trees fell on homes and cars – one family having a very lucky escape when they evacuated their house just before it was sliced in two. Six of the seven oaks on The Vine at Sevenoaks were lost. Elsewhere trains were abandoned on tracks, boats were tossed out of the Medway, a ferry ready for sailing broke free and was swept into The Channel and a clouded leopard was at large for fifteen days, having escaped from a Kent wildlife park. It was said that, due to the pollution being washed out of the atmosphere, the rings of Saturn were visible. With his reporter’s hat on Bob had the idea of taking aerial photographs. Biggin Hill had just one undamaged aeroplane from which he and a photographer took around 150 photographs of the devastation caused by the hurricane. He had the idea of producing a book so, after being turned down by a publishing company, he approached Lakeside Press – a general printers. Thus a book called In The Wake of The Hurricane was published. By Christmas 25,000 copies had been sold and it had made the Best Sellers Book List in a National newspaper. Bob, with the assistance of his wife, amassed a wide collection of stories and was soon in demand to produce similar books for other counties and even for other countries including Jamaica. Eventually he resigned from the local paper to concentrate on writing books, which now number 21, and raising money for charities. The original oak on The Vine has been joined by seven young trees along with a time capsule created with the help of local school children.
Christina Tyler, Programme Organiser
Was it a storm or was it a hurricane on the night of 16 October 1987? Swanley History Group members who experienced it had no doubt – it was a very damaging and alarming hurricane! Bob Ogley, our speaker at our October meeting, told us about his experiences of the event and how things changed for him afterwards. At that time he was editor of Sevenoaks Chronicle and living at Toys Hill above Westerham. His walk through the woods to his local pub would never be the same again as 90% of the woodlands growing for two hundred years and more were felled. There were huge craters where mighty oak and beech trees had stood. Trees fell on homes and cars – one family having a very lucky escape when they evacuated their house just before it was sliced in two. Six of the seven oaks on The Vine at Sevenoaks were lost. Elsewhere trains were abandoned on tracks, boats were tossed out of the Medway, a ferry ready for sailing broke free and was swept into The Channel and a clouded leopard was at large for fifteen days, having escaped from a Kent wildlife park. It was said that, due to the pollution being washed out of the atmosphere, the rings of Saturn were visible. With his reporter’s hat on Bob had the idea of taking aerial photographs. Biggin Hill had just one undamaged aeroplane from which he and a photographer took around 150 photographs of the devastation caused by the hurricane. He had the idea of producing a book so, after being turned down by a publishing company, he approached Lakeside Press – a general printers. Thus a book called In The Wake of The Hurricane was published. By Christmas 25,000 copies had been sold and it had made the Best Sellers Book List in a National newspaper. Bob, with the assistance of his wife, amassed a wide collection of stories and was soon in demand to produce similar books for other counties and even for other countries including Jamaica. Eventually he resigned from the local paper to concentrate on writing books, which now number 21, and raising money for charities. The original oak on The Vine has been joined by seven young trees along with a time capsule created with the help of local school children.
Christina Tyler, Programme Organiser