A 3.3 magnitude earthquake hit Staffordshire on Wednesday night, with residents reporting “rumbling” and rattling windows and doors.
The British Geological Survey (BGS) confirmed the tremor, which had an epicentre 7.3km (4.5 miles) below the village of Tean, around 15 miles south-east of Stoke-on-Trent in the West Midlands.
The BGS said it had received reports from around the area on Wednesday night, mainly from within 20km (12.5 miles) of the epicentre, which described “an initial rumbling, then a bang” with what “felt more like a shunt, like something had hit something”.
Mark Begg, 30, told the PA news agency he was at home in Uttoxeter when he felt “a very large shake”.
He said he checked “around the house to see if I could see anything” and “after noticing there were no signs of damage I concluded it was most likely a mini earthquake”.
Tom, 38, in Cheadle, Staffordshire, said: “I was sitting watching an episode of Only Connect with my wife on YouTube and as we opened another bottle of wine the whole house shook.
“I thought either one of the children had fallen out of bed or something else had happened.”
The BGS says it detects and locates between 200 and 300 earthquakes in the UK each year. Only around 20 to 30 of those are felt by people, with the others detected by sensitive instruments.
Wednesday’s earthquake is the largest of 21 to hit the UK in the last two months, comfortably beating two 1.8 magnitude tremors felt on the Isle of Mull in May.
It falls some way short of the record earthquake in the UK, which the BGS records as a 6.1 magnitude tremor in the North Sea, about 75 miles north east of Great Yarmouth, on June 7 1931.
The strongest effects of that earthquake were felt in the seaside town of Filey on the North Yorkshire coast, where a church spire rotated. The tremor was also felt as far away as Surrey, Norway, Denmark and Germany.
