History of natural disasters in Britain?

Question:

History of natural disasters in Britain?

Anyone know what the biggest recorded earthquake was to hit Britain? How about the biggest flood in the last 1000 years? Or for that matter the longest drought?
P.S. I just reached level 3 (GO ME!) so you can expect to see a lot more of my curious conundrums......... extra points for anyone who can tell me if conundrums is the proper plural form of conundrum!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Though severe earthquakes in the north of France and southern England are rare,[1] the Dover Straits earthquake of 6 April 1580 appears to have been the largest in the recorded history of England, Flanders or northern France. The earthquake, which occurred about 6 o'clock in the evening, is well recorded in contemporary documents,[2] including a well-known letter from Gabriel Harvey to Edmund Spenser, the "earthquake letter", mocking popular and academic methods of accounting for the tremors.

On 30 January 1607 (New style) the Bristol Channel floods resulted in the drowning of an estimated 2,000 or more people, with houses and villages swept away, farmland inundated and livestock destroyed, wrecking the local economy along the coasts of the Bristol Channel, UK.

The devastation was particularly bad on the Welsh side from Laugharne in Carmarthenshire to above Chepstow on the English border. Cardiff was the most badly affected town. The coasts of Devon and the Somerset Levels as far inland as Glastonbury Tor, 14 miles from the coast, were also affected.

The Great Irish Famine (1740-1741) was perhaps of similar magnitude to the better-known Great Irish Famine of 1847-49. Unlike the famine of the 1840s, which was caused by a fungal infection in the potato crop, that of 1740-41 was due to extremely cold and then rainy weather in successive years, resulting in a series of poor harvests. Hunger compounded a range of fatal diseases. The cold and its effects extended across Europe, and it is now seen to be the last serious cold period at the end of the 'Mini Ice Age' of 1400-1800.

There is no information available for the number of deaths caused by the famine; demographic information for the period is lacking, given the infrequent census taking of the 18th century, but in Kerry some 15,000 'hearths' (households) were reduced to 11,000 by 1742.

Yes, conundrums is the correct plural form of conundrum.