A Shower of Stones.
News comes to hand of mysterious showers of strange stones, which spread extraordinary consternation among the people of St Clears, in Carmarthenshire. According to the statement of Mr William Thomas, of Clarebrook, St Clears, a respectable small farmer, his son was returning home with another lad a little before eight on Wednesday evening when they were nearly frightened out of their wits by a shower of stones.
Their story was not believed, and a search party was sent out. When he heard what they had to say Mr Thomas started out to investigate for himself, and encountered precisely the same experience – the weird “snapping” of stones on the hard earth was all around him. Small stones fell sharply as he walked, and later on came aerolites of much larger size.
One stone crashed into a hedge, and he managed to secure it, and subsequently sent it to the geological department of Cardiff College.
Portsmouth Evening News, 2nd May 1903.
Phenomenon at St Clears.
Shower of stones falls from space.
People in the district alarmed.
A shower of stones fell from space in the neighbourhood of St Clears on Wednesday night. Specimens have been sent to the professors in the geological department of the Cardiff University College. Mr William Thomas, of Clarebrook, about two miles from Lower St Clears, a small farmer, who is also engaged in road repairing under the county council, in an interview with our reporter said: –
“On Wednesday evening, between 7.30 and eight o’clock, my son, David John Thomas, and another boy, named William Scourfield, son of a foreman ganger on the Great Western Railway, living at Carmarthen, were returning to Clarebrook from Pwlltrap, when they noticed a stone falling with force near by. Thinking that there was someone behind the hedge, they made a search and found no one near.
Dismissing the incident from their minds with boyish inconsequence, they re-started their walk, but had not proceeded many yards before other stones fell around them. They made another search for an explanation in the shape of ill-intentioned persons, and finding no trace of human beings near they became frightened, and made their way as quickly as possible to Clarebrook.
On arrival there my son made a complaint to his mother. She pooh-poohed the whole matter, but the boys were so persistent in their suggestions of mystery that she and four railway gangers (hailing from Llangadock), who are lodging at the house, were persuaded to go outside and listen. To the infinite surprise of all, they could hear intermittent sounds around the house as of stones coming into sharp contact with the ground.
They at once formed themselves into a search-party, but failing to discover any explanation, and the sounds continuing, together with an occasional glimpse of some object rushing through the air, they became alarmed, and something akin to terror prevailed amongst them. After returning to the house the boy Scourfield said he was afraid to go to his lodgings at Crossing, Ffynongain, and I had to go with him as escort.
As we were proceeding out of the yard several small stones fell near me. This continued for a little time, and we were, naturally, very frightened. We, however, proceeded on our way, and when in the middle of a large field two more stones fell within an awkward distance of us. Another object crashed into the bramble growing upon the hedge not far away. I marked the spot, and found a stone there the following morning. We again resumed our walk, and when in the middle of the next field we waited and listened intently for further developments. Then it was that I distinctly saw a stone coming through the air, and it was not until that moment that it dawned upon me that the projectiles came from space.
We were now truly alarmed, and shouted to the lodgers at Clarebrook that the stones came from the sky. Between that spot and the boy’s lodgings at Crossing about six more stones fell. The shower lasted intermittently for from three-quarters of an hour to an hour.”
Mr J Phillips, a St Clears postman, also informed our representative that on Thursday morning he picked up several stones of a peculiar character on the fields in question.
Western Mail, 2nd May 1903.
A storm of stones.
Astronomers were busily scanning the heavens on the night of the 1st inst. to see if any stars were missing, for news had come to hand of mysterious showers of strange stones which spread extraordinary consternation among the people of St Clears, in Carmarthenshire. According to the statement of Mr William Thomas, of Clarebrook, St Clears, a respectable small farmer, his son was returningn home with another lad a little before eight on Wednesday evening when they were nearly frightened out of their wits by a shower of stones. Their story was not believed, and a search party was sent out. When he heard what they had to say Mr Thomas started out to investigate for himself, and encountered precisely the same experience – the weird “snapping” of stones on the hard earth all around him. Small stones fell sharply as he walked, and later on came aerolites of much larger size.
One stone crashed into a hedge, and he managed to secure it and subsequently sent it to the geological department of Cardiff College. The stones are of a nature unknown in the district, says Mr Thomas. “They look as if they had been calcined, and they fell over an area of roughtly about 400 square yards in extent.”
Showers of meteoric dust are very common, though this is not the period of the years when they are most frequent, but stones of any size do not often fall in such quantities as appears to have been the case at St Clears. The earth is continually coming in contact with myriads of meteors – 7,500,000 in one day, according to Professor Newton, of Yale College – but they dissipate, as a rule, in impalpable dust. Some 300 of such aerolites as fell in Carmarthenshire are exhibited in the British Museum, and there is a fine collection at the Natural History Museum.
Wicklow People, 9th May 1903.
A London paper says there are in the British Museum three hundred of the small aerolites which fell near St Clears in May, 1903. West Wales readers will recollect this mysterious shower of stones; but this is the first time we have heard it attributed to a celestial source.
Western Mail, 28th July 1921.