Whole lot of shaking going on, but we don't usually notice

We were quietly watching TV at home, in north Leeds, when the house shuddered for a second or two, causing us to exchange uneasy glances before I went round the house to make sure we weren't being burgled. Judging by the responses of others this was a common scene in places like Huddersfield, Harrogate and Pateley Bridge, as people tried to work out what was going on.

It turned out there had been a 3.6 magnitude earthquake which struck a few miles north west of Ripon, in North Yorkshire. Police received reports of chandeliers rattling, floors shaking and loud noises.

The quake was felt as far west as Blackpool and as far north as Sunderland, although in the grand scheme of things it wasn't what most people would call a seismic event. "Normally from an earthquake this size we'd expect things like some cracked sidewalks, people would see their chandeliers swinging back and forth, maybe some waves in their drink glasses. But we generally don't expect to see damage or deaths from earthquakes until they get up to about magnitude 5.5," says geophysicist Paul Caruso of the United States Geological Survey.

Monday night's tremor was the second in as many weeks after a similar strength quake hit Cumbria. Such incidents make the news here simply because we don't associate the UK with earthquakes, even small ones. However, they are more common than you might think.

According to the British Geological Survey (BGS) between 150 and 200 earthquakes are detected in the UK and the surrounding waters each year. Most of these are minor tremors and go unnoticed by people, while a quake on the scale of Monday's occurs around three times a year.

The biggest earthquake to hit the UK in recent times happened in February, 2008, when a 5.2 magnitude quake was recorded near the Lincolnshire town of Market Rasen. Tremors were felt in parts of Holland and Northern Ireland, and student David Bates suffered a broken pelvis after a chimney collapsed on his attic bedroom at his home in Wombwell, in South Yorkshire.

The UK's biggest recorded earthquake was at Dogger Bank, 60 miles off the Yorkshire coast, in June, 1931. This measured 6.1 on the Richter scale and the effects were felt throughout UK and as far away as Belgium and France.

The earthquake was felt in London and even caused Dr Crippen's head to fall off at Madame Tussaud's. Filey was one of the worst places hit with a church spire twisted by the tremor. Chimneys collapsed in Hull, Beverley and Bridlington, while the cliffs at Flamborough Head were damaged. It was also reported that a woman in Hull died after suffering a heart attack caused by the quake.

Although Yorkshire can hardly be called an earthquake hotspot, places like the Dales and the East Coast have repeatedly been hit by tremors over the centuries. One of the earliest recorded incidents was in 1349 when a quake, probably in the North Sea, caused monks at Meaux Abbey, in Beverley, to be thrown from their stalls. Other notable Yorkshire earthquakes include one that hit Skipton in 1900 that had a magnitude of 3.1 and another dating back to 1780, in Wensleydale, where a barrel of gin was reportedly thrown from a shelf.

Earthquake activity is controlled by the motion of the Earth's tectonic plates and quakes occur when the stresses in the crust exceed the strength of the rock causing a break along lines of weakness. Despite recent devastating quakes in Haiti and China, the number of big quakes over the so-called "magic five" magnitude mark has remained fairly constant.

Davie Galloway, a seismologist for the BGS, says there has been a rise in the number of smaller ones recorded which is largely due to the fact we now have better equipment to detect them with, rather than them happening more often.

So what causes earthquakes in the UK? "We aren't at the edges of the big plate boundaries unlike places like Japan, Indonesia and California but we have the Eurasian and African plates colliding and beyond the west coast is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, so we have this pushing and tilting effect on the UK," he says.

"Monday night's quake was significant for the UK because we aren't used to these kind of things, so I can understand why it might have been a little bit frightening for some people. But in worldwide terms it was just a blip on the map."