Barbara Logan remembers the 1999 solar eclipse in Shortlanesend near Truro as a moment when the day changed fast. She said it was a “weird sensation” and that it was strange not to know if it was day or night.
On 11 August 1999, a few minutes of the day turned to night as the Moon blocked out the sun’s light. Only Cornwall and the Channel Islands saw totality in the British Isles.
Cornwall and the Channel Islands
Barbara Logan said: “We were all gathered down in the square with our glasses ready.” She added: “One minute it was light then it began to get dark and I could hear all the birds singing and getting ready to go to roost.”
Nigel Brown, who was visiting Truro for the day, said: “Once the eclipse started it was a wonderful but really eerie experience.” He also said: “I couldn't believe how day turned into dusk and the birds stopped making a noise.”
Guernsey and Alderney
Anne Le Cheminant said hundreds of people lined the seafront in St Peter Port, Guernsey, to watch the total eclipse. More than 250 astronomers gathered in Alderney to watch and photograph it, adding another layer of memory to a day that many people in Cornwall and the Channel Islands still describe in the same breath.
The eclipse is remembered now because a partial solar eclipse was expected later in Devon and Cornwall and in Guernsey and Jersey. In Devon and Cornwall the timings were about 18:18, 19:15 and 20:09, while in Guernsey and Jersey they were about 18:21, 19:17 and 20:10.
Devon and Cornwall timings
That later eclipse gave people in those places a way to compare a partial event with the sharper memory of 11 August 1999, when totality was visible only in Cornwall and the Channel Islands. For Barbara Logan, the lasting image is still the same: a square full of people, glasses ready, and a sky that briefly made it hard to tell day from night.
