Helston residents say they heard a rumbling noise followed by a loud bang during yesterday's (August 8) 2.2 magnitude earthquake.

The quake struck the area at around 6pm and shook the walls of buildings.

Leonard Harvey said: "I was finishing my tea, and there was a build-up to the bang and then the bang itself and the furniture in the house vibrated.

"We couldn't figure out what it was for a second and then I went outside and looked around. My wife suggested it was an earth tremor and that turned out to be what it was."

Wayne Rogers said: "I was up Gwealmayowe caravan park with my girlfriend. We had just started watching the news and was having a cup of coffee, then we heard this almighty crack we thought was thunder, then we heard the caravan shaking."

He added: "Literally the whole caravan shook. Nothing fell over or nothing like that – it shook well and truly for a good few seconds but that was about it really."

Pam Larkin said: "It sounded like a rushing noise, a rumbling noise and then a big bang. That was it. We checked everything because we thought the aerial had fallen off the roof but it hadn't."

Tracey and Geoff Quince had just arrived at their holiday lodge from Lincolnshire when the earthquake happened.

Geoff said: "All of a sudden there was a loud boom-type bang noise that I thought probably was something to do with Culdrose airfield or a bird scarer, that sort of big resonance of a boom.

"We didn't think nothing else of it much after that really until we actually got a text from our mother who'd seen it on the local news right down in Cambridgeshire."

The British Geological Survey confirmed that a tremor was registered by seismographs around 5km (3.1 miles) south west of Falmouth at a depth of 2.8km (1.7 miles).