20th April 1876 · Shropshire, England
The only iron meteorite known to have fallen in England — a remarkable visitor from deep space that crashed into a Shropshire field nearly 150 years ago.
The Rowton meteorite showing its cut & polished face with internal Widmanstätten structure. Size approx. 13 × 11 × 7 cm. Photo: Andy Tindle. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.
A thunderous arrival on a rainy Thursday afternoon
At approximately 3.40pm on Thursday, 20th April 1876, the only iron meteorite known to have fallen in England landed about 448m (1,470 feet) south-east of the interpretation panel. The weather at the time was recorded as being heavy rain, but without thunder or lightning. Workers in the field heard a rumbling noise, followed by a bang said to resemble the discharge of a cannon. The meteorite fell in the field and reportedly buried itself up to 35cm (18″) in the soil.
Report of the fall in the Sheffield Independent, Monday 24th April 1876. Reproduced courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive.
O.S. map (1880) showing the estimated position of the fall (red star) close to the railway line. Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.
The land on which the meteorite fell was owned by Harry George Vane, the 4th Duke of Cleveland, but administered by his land agent Samuel Harding Ashworth (1816–1892). Alerted by the workers, the tenant farmer, George Francis Brookes (1851–1927), noticed a small hole in the ground and probed it with his stick. He recovered the meteorite and passed it to his land agent.
At the time, meteorites were barely understood and were for a long time thought to be volcanic dust thrown into the Earth's atmosphere and condensed by lightning strikes. The idea that they might come from farther out in space was very new and not widely accepted by the scientific community.
A fragment of planetary core, billions of years old
The Rowton meteorite is about 15cm in its longest dimension and weighs about 3½ kg (7¼ pounds). It is composed mainly of iron and nickel, with some cobalt and other trace elements.
The exterior surface is smooth with some hollows formed by burning up of material as it travelled through the Earth's atmosphere. These hollows, which look like 'thumbprints', are called regmaglypts.
After Rowton was collected, a piece was cut off and polished to reveal the interior structure, which showed the typical criss-cross (Widmanstätten) pattern found in iron meteorites. This is formed by crystallisation of the iron and nickel during planetary cooling.
The meteorite is now in the National Collection at the Natural History Museum, London.
Only 14 meteorites have been recorded falling in England since 1623
The largest single-piece English meteorite is Wold Cottage (Yorkshire), a stony meteorite of 25.4kg which fell in 1795. The most recent, Winchcombe (2021), is a rare carbonaceous chondrite. Both are cared for by the Natural History Museum, London.
Rocks and metal arriving on Earth from across the solar system
Examination and chemical analysis shows that most meteorites come from asteroids, having been knocked off by collisions. These meteorites formed very early in the history of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, making them the oldest things on Earth. Other meteorites were blasted from the surface of the Moon by lunar impacts, and a few even originate from the surface of Mars.
Meteorites are classified into three main groups:
Largely composed of silicate minerals with some free iron. Account for ~95% of all known meteorites.
A mixture of iron and nickel metal. Represent the core of a planet or impact melts. ~4% of known meteorites.
Iron and nickel with crystals of the green silicate mineral olivine (peridot). Origins not fully understood.
As of 2026, more than 78,000 meteorites have been officially described worldwide, with about 62% coming from Antarctica, about 21% from Africa (almost all from Sahara), and about 8% from Asia (mostly the Arabian Peninsula).
Accounting for 84% of the total weight of all known meteorites
Although irons only account for about 4% of meteorites by count, because they are much more dense, they account for about 84% of the weight (about 700 metric tons) of all known meteorites. Iron meteorites are often much larger than stony ones.
The Hoba iron meteorite, Namibia — the largest known at ~60 tons. Photo: W. T. Gordon, 1926. Public domain.
Total: 367.5 metric tons — 54% of the weight of all known meteorites
Only the largest meteorites leave craters on Earth
Aerial view of the Barringer (Meteor) Crater in Arizona. Reproduced from Wikipedia.
The most visible and best-preserved large crater on Earth is the Barringer (Meteor) Crater in the Arizonan desert. It is just over 1km across and was formed by the impact of a large iron meteorite about 50,000 years ago.
The meteorite which killed the reptilian dinosaurs is believed to have been a stony meteorite estimated at about 10–15km across. It crashed to Earth about 66 million years ago leaving a crater some 150km wide and 20km deep in what is now the Gulf of Mexico.
The largest crater so far discovered is the Vredefort structure in South Africa. Estimates of its full size vary from 170–300km in diameter. It is about 2 billion years old and was made by an asteroid of 20–25km, hitting Earth at about 64,000 km per hour.
Our only regular source of material from space
It is far too expensive to try and collect fresh material from the far reaches of the Solar System. Meteorites are our only regular source of material from space and help us to work out how the solar system formed.
Iron meteorites have been used in the past by the Inuit people as a source of metal for knives and spears — demonstrating that these cosmic visitors have been valued by humanity for centuries.
An Inuit meteoritic spear mounted in a Narwhal tusk. Image: CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
No verified records of anyone being killed directly by a falling meteorite
A woman was bruised by an 8-pound meteorite fragment which crashed through her roof, bounced off a radiogram, and hit her on the hip whilst she slept. Apart from hefty bruising she was fine.
A meteorite smashed into the boot of a Chevrolet Malibu car, causing severe damage. As a result, the car sold for well above its market value!
A 3g fragment hit a young boy after bouncing off a tree. He was unharmed.
The Winchcombe meteorite narrowly missed a house and hit a driveway; both the meteorite and its impact point are preserved in the Natural History Museum, London.
Damage or injuries usually result from pressure waves if the meteorite explodes in the lower atmosphere. The Chelyabinsk meteorite produced a pressure wave equivalent to a 4.2 magnitude earthquake and injured about 1,400 people (mainly from broken glass) and damaged 7,200 buildings in 6 cities. No-one was reported killed.