The Meteorite Site in Wold Newton
On a low rise, beyond a screen of trees, behind a small holiday park in the Yorkshire Wolds, a brick obelisk stands incongruously at the edge of an otherwise nondescript field. It bears a plaque inscribed as follows:
“Here, on this spot, Decr. 13th, 1795 / fell from the Atmosphere AN EXTRAORDINARY STONE / In breadth 28 inches / In length 36 inches…”
The words are carved in a variety of enthusiastic fonts, with the opening “Here” given particularly earnest flourish. The extraordinary, extraterrestrial stone in question is the Wold Cottage meteorite, the first from anywhere to be widely recognised as a rock from outer space. After a 4.56 billion-year journey, it now rests in the Treasures Gallery of the Natural History Museum.
I appreciate many aspects of this event: that it occurred in this relative backwater yet was witnessed by several people, including a ploughman close enough to be sprayed with impact debris; that the landowner, a playwright and newspaperman, commissioned local craftsmen to raise this eccentric monument; that the spot is still marked on an Ordnance Survey map, albeit obscurely, so one must know what to look for; and that the current landowner permits visitors.
Most of all, I value that on a dreary day in the dreariest of months, I can pick my way through the mud to stand and squint through icy drizzle and be reminded that sometimes, in addition to rain, sleet and hail, the sky can deliver something truly extraordinary.
A Meteorite in Modern Media
The same evening, we streamed a new series on BBC and witnessed a meteorite plummeting into a cul-de-sac in suburban Manchester. The series, Wreck, is a paean to infinite and peculiar possibility. Its creator, Mackenzie Crook, understands that nowhere is exempt from the potential for pure, unwonted magic. I have devoured the entire series and, despite a childhood trauma related to Watership Down, adored every minute.
I add this pleasing coincidence of two space-rocks-in-one-day to my personal cache of moments that give me hope. It fosters a belief that if one keeps walking the land—any land—with mind and senses open, then small, slim chances accumulate and coalesce until, sooner or later, extraordinary things become almost certain to happen.
