The Bishop's Castle (UK) Earthquake of 2 April 1990

A large earthquake, by British standards, occurred near Bishop's Castle in the Welsh Borders on 2 April 1990 at 13:46 GMT. This magnitude 5.1 ML event was felt over a wide area of Britain, from Ayrshire in the north to Cornwall in the south, Kent in the east and Dublin in the west. The epicentre was near the village of Clun, 7 km SSW of Bishop's Castle. Damage was minor and limited to the epicentral area, north to Wrexham and in particular Shrewsbury, which suffered most. Results from a macroseismic survey by BGS revealed that the maximum intensity in the epicentral area was 6 MSK. The mainshock had a focal depth of 14.3±4.7 km; however, better located aftershocks further constrained the mid-crustal seismicity to 15±0.2 km in the best cases. The marked lack of aftershocks contrasts with some previous similar magnitude events for intraplate earthquakes in Britain and throughout the world and may represent a large stress drop due to almost total relief of strain energy by the mainshock. The aftershock epicentral distribution shows a preference for an approximately N-S orientation which is consistent with one of the focal planes of the mainshock focal mechanism and suggests that this is the fault plane. Movement on this plane was predominantly strike-slip with a component of thrust and was consistent with a maximum compressive stress axis orientated NW-SE. The NE striking Welsh Borderland Fault System dominates the epicentral area; however, there is no surface fault which can clearly be related to the seismicity.