Exeter University publishes new paper on the 1987 hurricane

A new research paper from the University of Exeter finds that Britain's Great Storm of 1987 exposed a range of anxieties and fears in people, revealing an increasing sense of separation from nature. 

According to the Met Office’s website, the historic hurricane across the southeast of Britain caused devastating damage, with gusting 100 mph winds blowing down 15 million trees and killing 18 people.

Personal responses collected weeks after the storm demonstrated its severity, as the impact upon infrastructure and domestic dwellings evoked memories of the Blitz and tapped into the dread of the late Cold War-era nuclear war.

Written by historians at the University of Exeter, the research paper was published in “Cultural and Social History” and studied personal accounts of the hurricane held by the Mass Observation Project (MOP), which is a national repository for observed modern British history. 

Dr Timothy Cooper, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Exeter’s Penryn campus, said: “Through the MOP, we have access to detailed accounts of unsettling, uncanny, and sometimes terrifying, experiences of the storm.

“In recording the sensory effects of the gale, their writings reveal how readily feelings of comfort and safety in the home could be undone and point to a process of sensory withdrawal from external nature that tells of important changes in embodied relationships to the natural environment in the post-war period.”

Curated by the University of Sussex since 1981, the MOP was originally launched in the 1930s to document everyday life in Britain. 

It collects personal accounts from volunteer panellists through annual questionnaires, known as directives. 

Directive 24, part 2, issued several weeks after the hurricane of October 15, 1987, sought to capture personal experiences of the storm, which ravaged the southern and south eastern counties. 

Nearly 550 people responded, with more than half living in the hardest-hit areas, creating the most extensive archive of personal testimony on the event's impact.

Authors Dr Cooper and student Matthew Turner found that many of these responses showed people turning to either lived or imagined experiences to explain their feelings. 

The loss of electricity and following blackout elicited from some a "sensory nostalgia", harking back to “the Dunkirk Spirit” and to reading by “cosy candlelight”. 

However, many people also felt a prevalent sense of terror towards the sound of the wind, comparing it to the war and the thousand bomber raids over Southern England.

For people not old enough to remember the Blitz, apocalyptic fears of a future war provided the theme of several responses. 

One woman wrote: “In my half-awake state, I thought it was a nuclear attack”.

Describing the following morning, another added: “It was really eerie, like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion”.

The storm also exposed anxieties around the dark and windows, with several people reporting that they had to physically relocate to a different room in the house to reduce their levels of stress and unease. 

Matthew said: “Britain’s 1987 storm was undoubtedly a profoundly disruptive embodied experience for those who encountered it.

“We can see clearly how it disturbed and discomforted many people, bringing into question the perceptual technologies and networks of power that sustained the distinction between internal domestic comfort and the exterior world of ‘nature’ in the twentieth century.

“The efforts that some people went to physically re-establishing the corporeal boundary between inside and outside worlds, trying to regain their associated comforts in the face of the storm, reveal how terrifying a threat ‘nature at its most vicious’ could be.”

The article is part of Dr Cooper's broader research into the storm, looking into its political and environmental history and exploring the role of weather in Britain's social and environmental narratives.