The pretty little village that's also the 'earthquake capital' of the UK

A tiny Scottish village has been dubbed the UK's earthquake capital after suffering up to 700 tremors a year and spurring scientists to invent the modern seismometer.

Pretty Comrie, in Perthshire, is home to around 2,000 people and is noted for its Victorian architecture and white church nestled on the banks of the River Earn.

But beneath the surface of this rural idyll lies a geologically active fissure in the Earth's crust known as the Highland Boundary Fault, which separates the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland.

Comrie's unique position on the fault means forces deep underground have caused earthquakes and tremors to be felt in the village with records going back to the 1500s.

According to legend, in the 1830s more than 7,000 quakes rocked the area sparking scientists of the time to seek to invent technology capable of recording the geological events.

In response to the phenomenon Scottish physicist James David Forbes created the world's first pendulum seismometer in 1842. It worked by recorded tremors using a pencil placed on paper above a pendulum which moved in reaction to tremors.

Such was the reputation of Comrie for seismic events, in 1872 an Earthquake House was constructed on the outskirts of the village on the fault line.

The little unassuming one-room, one-storey stone building contains a seismometer capable of detecting quakes locally, but also large earthquakes almost anywhere on the planet.

It took measurements during the disastrous Syria-Turkey earthquake in 2023 and even registered the Tokyo earthquake in Japan in 2011.

The Earthquake House is now a popular tourist attraction and although it is not open to visitors there is a small window where people can look inside at the equipment.

Comrie has been dubbed the Shaky Toun by locals and the largest of all known earthquakes in the village occurred in 1893, measuring a whopping 4.8 on the Richter Scale.