TWENTY years ago on Tuesday people across southern England woke up to find a great storm had caused devastation of a kind that had not been seen for more than 250 years.

They looked out of their windows to see fences and trees blown down, tiles missing and wheelie-bins blown from their gardens. They were the lucky ones. Tragically, the storm killed 19 people - including two firefighters in Highcliffe, Dorset, who lost their lives when a tree crashed on their cab - and hundreds more were injured.

The storm ripped roofs from houses, boats from moorings and caused more than £1 billion of damage.

Locally, the Greystones sheltered housing complex at Highcliffe was badly hit, with its roof torn off completely.

The first signs of the storm blew up on the previous evening but the worst of the damage occurred between 2am and 6am with gusts of 94mph.

The strongest gust was 122mph, in East Anglia, and the Royal Sovereign lightship on the south coast recorded an average wind speed of 86mph.

The high winds brought down around 15 million trees, devastating woodland and heritage sites as well as gardens.

Today, nature has repaired the damage but the legacy is that much of the landscape of the region has changed.