Rare Earthquake Creates Alarm in Southern England
The quake -- whose epicentre was identified by the BGS as being 7.5 miles (12 kilometres) off the coast of Dover, in the English Channel -- was the largest to hit Britain since one in the West Midlands in 2002.
Most of the damage was caused in the town of Folkestone, although the quake was felt around Kent and up to 100 miles (160 kilometres) away from its epicentre in other counties such as Essex, East Sussex and Suffolk.
A spokesman for Kent's Fire and Rescue Service said they had received around 200 calls, with people complaining that "their chimneys have fallen down (and of) large cracks in people's houses."
Electricity and gas supplies to homes in some parts of Kent were cut off but were later restored. Authorities are still investigating some reports of gas smells in the aftermath of the quake.
Hendrick van Eck, 27, from the city of Canterbury, said that the tremor lasted just a few seconds.
"I then heard the sound of cracking and it was getting heavier and heavier. It felt as if someone was at the end of my bed hopping up and down," he said.
Sharon Hayles, from the nearby village of Stanford, said it felt like "the whole house was being slid across like a funfair ride."
And Paul Smye-Rumsby, from the port town of Dover, told BBC radio: "Suddenly the bed shook violently. I thought my wife had got cramp or something but then I saw the curtains were moving and the house was shaking. It lasted about 1.5 seconds."
According to the United States Geological Survey, the quake measured 4.7 on the open-ended Moment Magnitude scale now used by US seismologists.
The depth of the epicentre was put at 7.1 kilometres (4.4 miles).
A spokesman for Eurostar, which links Britain to continental Europe by rail via the Channel Tunnel, said that services at the Ashford terminal in Kent, near where the quake hit, were unaffected.