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London: Britain was shaken by its biggest earthquake for a quarter of a century on Wednesday, with tremors measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale felt across England.
The tremor hit around 1am (5am UAE time) with its epicentre in the agricultural northeastern county of Lincolnshire, but people were woken as far away as Wales, Scotland and London.
The quake caused roof tiles to topple across England, but there were few reports of injuries although a 19-year-old man was taken to hospital in the Yorkshire town of Barnsley after roof masonry collapsed into his bedroom.
The British Geological Survey (BGS) initially said the quake measured 5.3 on the Richter scale before revising the figure to 5.2.
Seismologist Brian Baptie of the BGS said: "This is a significant earthquake for the UK and will have been widely felt across England and Wales."
He said such a quake could be expected to hit Britain every 10 to 20 years.
The tremor was the biggest recorded quake since North Wales was rattled by one measuring 5.4 in 1984. The epicentre of the quake was the town of Market Rasen.
In April 2007, Kent in eastern England experienced a tremor measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale. The strongest tremor in recent years was in Dudley in central England, which was shaken by a quake measuring 5.0 in September 2002.
Lincolnshire Police said they had received reports of minor damage to homes near the epicentre of the quake. A spokeswoman for Leicestershire constabulary in central England said that they had been "inundated with phone calls... It does seem to be widespread".
She said there had been some reports of damage to chimneys, with bricks having fallen off, but said they had received no reports of injuries.
A spokeswoman for North West Ambulance Service said that she felt "the tremors here in our control room", while Merseyside Police and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, covering parts of northwest England, said they had received reports of tremors, but had no reports of any injuries.
Witnesses reported the tremors lasting between 10 and 15 seconds, and described cupboard doors flying open and frightened children waking from their sleep.
A student at Loughborough University in Leicestershire said the quake had caused his bed in his residence hall to move several centimetres.
An AFP correspondent in Ealing, west London, said his apartment building "shook for 10-15 seconds. The whole sofa was shaking."
"[The quake] was really bad. I was fast asleep and woke up and the room was shaking," Jemma Harrison, who lives in the northwest English city of Manchester, told the BBC.
"We have no reports of injuries [in London]," said a police spokesman in the capital.
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