Earthquake hits London

The tremor, measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale, lasted up to 15 seconds. It shook Britain from coast to coast just before 1am, displacing chimney pots and roof tiles from Newcastle to Brighton.

Emergency services were inundated with calls and some people fled their homes, arriving at police stations in their pyjamas demanding shelter.

At least one person was taken to hospital after a chimney collapsed and fell through the roof onto him as he lay sleeping in bed.

The quake struck just before 1am, with the epicentre at Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, about 150 miles from London.

BBC weatherman John Kettley, who lives in a village about 16 miles from the epicentre, told of his fear as his 150-year-old barn conversion started shaking. "It was absolutely terrifying. There was no warning. It's not like a weather forecast where you can see a storm coming.

"We were fast asleep and there was this terrifying shaking and rumbling. It was like a juggernaut coming down the corridor towards the bedroom. My wife Lynn was in shock. I jumped out of bed and held on to a glass-fronted wardrobe in case it toppled on us.

"My instant reaction was it was an earth tremor. We had been in an earthquake before and this felt just the same. But you expect it at the bottom end of the San Andreas fault but you don't expect it in Lincolnshire."

In London, the tremor was felt by MPs during a late-night sitting at the House of Commons.

In Hammersmith, Kiran Sekhon, 29, said: "I woke up absolutely terrified. I was in a deep sleep and all of a sudden woke to find my bed shaking. It went on for a few seconds and then stopped."

Kensington and Chelsea councillor Matthew Palmer, 43, felt the tremor as he watched the news in his front room in north Kensington.

He said: "My chair shook for five to 10 seconds and car alarms went off outside. My wife came downstairs carrying my one-year-old, who had been woken up. She said the upstairs windows were shaking like skeleton's teeth."

The quake's strength was described as "significant" by seismologist Brian Baptie of the British Geological Survey. He added: "It will have been widely felt across England and Wales." An aftershock measuring 1.8 on the Richter scale was reported at 4am.

It was the largest quake since 1984 when one measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale shook the Lleyn Peninsula of North Wales and was widely felt across England and Wales.

An elderly man from Wombwell, Barnsley, suffered injuries to his pelvis after the chimney of his house fell on him as he slept. He was taken to Barnsley District Hospital.

Fear was the main motivation for thousands of calls to emergency services. In Birmingham, a 31-year-old pregnant woman suffered a panic attack. It was reported that police across the Midlands received up to 5,000 calls in an hour. In Dudley 12 people marched into the police station in their pyjamas.

Homeowners rushed into the streets in their nightclothes to check for structural damage. Lincolnshire police reported dozens of calls from anxious residents near the epicentre. "It made us very, very busy for about an hour," said a force spokeswoman. "No one's been injured as far as we are aware."

Bev Finnegan, who lives in Market Rasen, said: "The noise was really, really terrifying, so deep and rumbling. It felt like the roof was going to fall in. There were people coming out in their dressing gowns wondering what it was."

Ben Sweeting told how residents in his street in Scunthorpe rushed from their homes. "My whole house shook like it was going to fall over and it felt as if the whole roof was coming off," he said.

Jamil Ali, from Sheffield, said: "I woke up and the first thing I thought was that there were a load of burglars in the house. The kids were screaming and so was my wife."

David Rendell, the former Liberal Democrat MP for Newbury, was at his desk at home in Berkshire: "Suddenly the whole place seemed to be moving a bit and I thought I must just be getting giddy but it turned out that it really was an earthquake."