FREAK winds of almost 80 miles an hour wreaked havoc across the Cotswolds in March 1986.

Cirencester was littered with fallen slates and country lanes were blocked by trees, power cables were brought down and vans overturned.

An articulated lorry parked in a layby on the Gloucester road was blown over when it was caught by a gust of wind. Fortunately the driver was unhurt in the incident.

A van that blew over on the A419 Cirencester to Swindon road was righted by its driver and driven off before police reached the scene.

The fire and rescue service had a busy time, they had to anchor a tree with ropes to stop it falling onto a house when it was uprooted at Happy Lands in Ashton Keynes.

Firemen were also called to take down a television aerial ripped out by the winds and which was damaging a chimney stack and guttering in Chesterton Lane.

In Dollar Street they removed a sign attached to the side of a house which was threatening to fall on to the pavement.

Further on, the police closed Gloucester Street to all traffic as falling slates from a number of houses were posing a serious threat to vehicles.

At 8.30am on the Monday morning, 2,000 homes in the Cirencester area, stretching as far as Northleach, Somerford Keynes and Kemble, were without electricity.

The main Northleach to Cirencester road was blocked by a tree, a signpost was brought down by a tree on the Tetbury road near Cirencester and in the Abbey Grounds a pensioner’s flat narrowly escaped damage.

Mr T Franklin of the Abbey Flats returned home shortly after 9am to find that a tree had crashed to the ground, completely surrounding all three sides of a bay window but miraculously causing no damage.

The severe weather also saw the cancellation of Cirencester’s Monday Market.

Mr Peter Saunders, a florist who was the only trader to brave the conditions, said that in all his time working at the market he had never seen conditions so bad or the market having to close.