Paper short abstract:

A unique quantity of documentary and material evidence survives attesting to the St Maur's Day storm of 1362. This permits a detailed understanding of factors including the immediate impact, damage distribution and short-medium term consequences of an extreme event on pre-modern English society.

Paper long abstract:

Few extreme weather events prior to the early modern period have enough surviving documentary evidence of sufficient detail to permit an accurate understanding of their effect and impact. As a result we know relatively little about how the damage caused by these events was perceived, experienced or mitigated in earlier periods. Almost uniquely, the quantity of sources documenting the St Maur's Day storm of January 1362, by all accounts one of the most severe British storms of recorded history, provides a rare insight into the effects of an unprecedented extreme event on pre-modern English society. The volume of both documentary and structural data allows a wide variety of the storm's effects to be reconstructed. This includes the area of effect as well as a detailed understanding of the post event response and recovery ranging right from the level of Royal and Papal decrees which aimed to ameliorate post event conditions right down to the organization of repairs on the estates of landowners and the effects of the storm on individuals. This provides an incomplete yet important record of the short-medium term responses induced by the storm. In addition, contemporary perceptions and later literary commemorations provide another route to gauge the cultural impact of the storm in its immediate aftermath and the longer term. Taken together, these different strands of data permit a reconstruction of the immediate impact and longer term effects of a natural disaster on the many different layers of medieval society.