Tremors felt across England

The quake’s epicentre was near Market Rasen, in Lincolnshire, but people across England said they felt buildings shaking shortly before 1am.

Many said the tremors had been strong enough to wake them.

One man - Lee Rushworth, 29 - was woken up when the tremor made his sofa shake against the bedroom wall of his ground floor flat.

“I thought someone was banging on the wall behind me but there was no-one there,” he said.

A man from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, was taken to hospital after a chimney collapsed and fell into his bedroom.

The man suffered injuries to his pelvis and was taken to Barnsley District Hospital.

She said the service had received only two calls relating to the earthquake - the second was from someone who was frightened.

East Midlands Ambulance Service, which covers Lincolnshire, said there had been a lot of emergency calls but no reports of injuries.

“Most of them were from elderly people who were quite frightened,” a spokeswoman said.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) initially gave the magnitude for the 12.56am earthquake as 5.3 on the Richter scale but has now said it was closer to 5.2.

It said the centre was 8km east of Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, and 22km south west of Grimsby.

Seismologist Dr Brian Baptie of the BGS said: “This is a significant earthquake for the UK and will have been widely felt across England and Wales.”

The BGS said it records around 200 earthquakes in the UK each year – an eighth of which are able to be felt by residents.

It said earthquakes of this size occur in the mainland UK around every 30 years but are more common in offshore areas.

Today’s quake is the largest since 1984 when an earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale shook the Lleyn Peninsula of north Wales and was widely felt across England and Wales.

People as far apart as Yorkshire, Manchester, Merseyside, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and London said they felt the tremor.