Mighty meteorite still record holder

FORTY years ago last Saturday, Barwell unwittingly became holder of a record that still holds good now when the largest meteorite to fall in the UK showered down on the village. Pieces collected at the Science Museum in London showed that in total it must have weighed 46kg (102lb). It was on Christmas Eve 1965 at about 4.15pm, as workers were leaving the boot and shoe factories, that the meteorite descended along a line found by PC George Scott to run NNE and passing roughly through two garages, the then Woodwards on The Common and Belle Vue on Shilton Road. Arthur Crow was going home from Harvey, Harvey & Co when, he said: “I heard a whizzing noise and thought someone was firing rockets from a plane or something.” He sheltered against a wall and then heard a thud as something hit the ground: “It was just as if I was back in wartime with bombs and rockets whizzing around.” Two doors away on The Common his sister and brother-in-law had what was happening brought home to them. Mary Grewcock had been ill and got up for the first time that day when she heard a loud bump and the sound of breaking glass. Her husband, Joseph, seeing a pane in the front-room window smashed, suspected children and on going outside to investigate saw what looked like stones in the road. He said: “I picked a lump up about as big as my hand. It was red hot and I threw it down again. Then I saw it had left a little crater in the road. “The road was full of stuff. I didn’t know what it was.” Pieces were also found all along Shilton Road including the home of a Mr P England, where one made a hole in the boot of his car parked on the drive. In September last year, digs were carried out on land off Normandy Way and Ashby Road, Hinckley, farmed by the Thorpe family of Stoke Golding for a BB2 / Open University programme to see if parts of the meteorite had fallen there.

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