More than 30 years ago the Great Storm - the worst of its kind in almost 300 years - struck Kent.

Here, Sam Lennon - a junior reporter in the county at the time - remembers that fateful night of October 15 and 16, 1987, along with others who recall the devastating impact of the hurricane-force winds...

The year was 1987 and I had not long moved to Dover to start a career in journalism.

I was lodging in a home in Barton Road with the landlady and her two children, and my first few months as a rookie reporter had been mostly straightforward.

But that was to change on the night of October 15, which proved a baptism of fire I’ll never forget.

We’d been warned a strong gale was on its way, but nothing could have prepared me for what was to come.

I was woken by the howling wind outside and the constant smash of tiles falling from the roof of the house I was staying in.

Everyone got out of bed, and my landlady got candles for the four of us.

Her little girl, aged just six and hearing the din of the wind and the sound of destruction outside, cried: “I’m scared!”

I did my best to reassure her, and somehow we all managed to get back to sleep that night.

When I left the house for work the next morning the wind had stopped, but I noticed the overwhelming smell of vegetation, from treetops and bushes torn up.

When I got to my office in the town centre, its electricity had been knocked out and we were only left with emergency lights until full power was restored.

At least there was no danger of work computer systems being crippled - we still only had typewriters.

With something like this, for any newsroom, the day’s pre-written schedule is torn up and everyone takes off on instinct and adrenaline.

Our photographers drove around the area to capture the scenes of destruction, like cars and trailers at a caravan park at Capel-le-Ferne scattered around like discarded toys.

I remember getting a story over the phone from a woman in Aycliffe whose house flank wall had been peeled off by the wind.

When I got back home that evening the landlady already had a builder fixing her roof.

I had begun to notice something sinister even the evening before when I had gone out on a driving lesson in torrential rain. I had wondered why it had been so unusually hard and violent, but afterwards realised this was the build-up to the complete hell about to be unleashed.

For a 12-year-old Steve Salter, the Great Storm had stirred within him a mixture of fear and excitement.

Now a local historian in Ashford, he recalls: “The constant whirring of the wind and the speed of it blowing outside was not only terrifying but also exciting.

“The more terrifying part was hearing the trees go down.”

Mr Salter, living in Kennington at the time, was - along with his family - one of the masses of people woken up by the deafening sounds in the early hours.

“The wind speed increased considerably outside,” he remembered. “It was literally howling and sounded like a motor whirring and getting faster and faster.

“Normally when it was windy outside our loft hatch would just lift up slightly but it was lifting up full pelt.

“You could hear the creaking and groaning of the trees.

“You daren’t look outside. It felt like the world was ending, or sounded like it. I’d never heard anything like it before and I’d lived in that house for a long time.”

Mr Salter’s father had just the day before finished building a car port, which remained intact, but the property’s trees and fencing were knocked down.

Mr Salter was a pupil nearby at The Towers School but that was closed the next day because of the storm.

Vince Maple, now a member of Medway Council, was then a 10-year-old living in Luton Road, Chatham.

“We lost our apple tree which blew down in our garden,” he recalled.

“I was due to take a spelling test on the Friday morning which included the word antidisestablishmentarianism.

“Like most schools that day, Luton Juniors was closed so I had an extra week to learn it - and I got it right.”

The Great Storm of 1987 was a violent extratropical cyclone hitting southern England, East Anglia and northern France.

It was the worst such weather catastrophe since the Great Storm of 1703.

It killed at least 22 people, 18 in England and four in France.

It began to build up in the last hours, of Thursday, October 15 and winds had reached Force 11 (meaning violent storm on the Beaufort Scale) by the early hours of October 16.

Most of the damage happened between 2am and 6am that day, with winds reaching up to 110mph.

It was caused when a cold front in the Bay of Biscay was powered by the collision of warm air from Africa and cold air from the Arctic.

Where the two air masses met, a frontal system developed and eventually large quantities of water vapour condensed to cloud, providing heat energy, driving the winds of the storm.

People loosely called the storm a hurricane, and some of the gusts were at that force, although overall it had not reached Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale to officially class it as that.

But no parts of Kent escaped the devastation.

Sevenoaks became Oneoak when six of the seven trees the town was said to be named after were knocked down.

Replacements were later planted.

At nearby Toys Hill a 93-acre woodland sitting on the highest point in Kent lost 98% per cent of its trees.

At Scotney Castle in Tunbridge Wells, 400-500 year-old sweet chestnut trees were lost.

A total of 11 funerals at Barham Crematorium on October 16 had to be cancelled because fallen trees had blocked roads.

Many rail lines had to be closed because of fallen trees and wrecked power lines.

One enduring image was the Sealink passenger ferry Hengist run aground at Folkestone.

The dramatic picture of the 5,500-ton vessel was taken by photographer Paul Amos, then a freelance.

It had been forced to put to sea on the night of October 15 when its lines kept breaking from its mooring at Folkestone Harbour.

However, the sea was so rough the waves almost capsized it.

Falling machinery damaged the alternator, causing it to lose all electrical power, and the Hengist then drifted, before being driven ashore onto a concrete apron at The Warren.

It remained stuck for almost a week and was not fully repaired until January 1988.

Tragedy struck a cargo ship when its captain, David Birch, and first mate Ron Horlock both perished.

The Bahamian-registered MV Sumnia, sheltering at Dungeness, was swept by the winds all the way to the breakwater at Dover Harbour and capsized.

The Dover lifeboat at the time, Rotary Service, rushed out to save the rest of the crew despite 60ft high waves.

But in the mission the second coxswain, Roy Couzens, 40, suffered a heart attack. He survived and was taken to Buckland Hospital to recover.

One-year-old Lauren Hazard miraculously escaped injury when a window was blown in and pushed into her cot in The Street, Ash. The frame and double glazing panel, weighing about 150lb (68kg) missed her by a fraction but she ended up covered in dust and mortar.

Weather forecasters were caught out and BBCs Michael Fish is still remembered for commenting on TV the day before: "Earlier on today apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she'd heard there was a hurricane on the way.

"Well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn't."

Since then he has said his remarks referred to Florida and were a link to a news story about devastation in the Caribbean that had just been broadcast.

No forecasters had any way been able to predict the extent of the Great Storm, which remains one of the most talked about weather events in living memory.

The Met Office says it was also a wake-up call that helped identify gaps in severe weather forecasting and highlighted the need for better communication with emergency services and the public.

October 1987 had been a miserable month for the Dover district even without the storm.

Exactly on October 15, senior managers at the British Coal corporation had decided to close Snowdown Colliery near Aylesham at a cost of 190 jobs.

Miners, feeling they now had no choice after a long fight to save the pit, voted to accept this three days later.

This was the third of Kent's four mines to close.

The Victorian St Paul's RC Church in Maison Dieu Road, Dover, was ravaged by a huge fire on October 23, wrecking much of the roof.

Yet the area was already reeling from the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster that March when the ferry capsized off Zeebrugge, killing 193 people.

The 23-day inquest at Dover Town Hall had just finished the week before, on October 8, 1987.

Even that ship didn't escape the storm as it was cast adrift off northern Spain, after it its tow rope came loose. It was then being taken to Taiwan for scrapping.

The storm and the Herald sinking had been part of a rash of UK disasters in the late 1980s.

On November 18, 1987, 31 people died after a fire at King's Cross tube station in London.

Flames had built up under a wooden escalator and erupted into the ticket hall in a flashover.

In July 1988 the Piper Alpha oil platform off Aberdeen exploded and sank in the North Sea off Aberdeen, killing 167 people.

The following April a human crush at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield caused 97 people to die.

It was the highest death toll in British sporting history.