A spokesman for Kent's Fire and Rescue Service said they had received "lots and lots" of calls from local people reporting that "their chimneys have fallen down (and) large cracks in people's houses."

Sky News reported some witnesses saying that they had been evacuated from their homes and that their gas and electricity supplies were cut off.

According to the US Geological Survey, the quake measured 4.7 on the open-ended Moment Magnitude scale which is now used by US seismologists.

Hendrick van Eck, 27, from the city of Canterbury, said that the tremor lasted just a few seconds.

"I then heard the sound of cracking and it was getting heavier and heavier. It felt as if someone was at the end of my bed hopping up and down," he said.

Sharon Hayles, from the nearby village of Stanford, said it felt like "the whole house was being slid across like a funfair ride."

The epicenter of the tremor, which the US Geological Survey said occurred at 8:18 am local time (0718 GMT), was located 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Canterbury.

The depth of the epicentre was put at 7.1 kilometres (4.4 miles).

Randy Baldwin, of the US Geological Survey, told BBC television that the quake was "fairly light," adding that there had been two or three others in the area over the last decade which were "somewhat smaller" than Saturday's.

A spokesman for Eurostar, which links Britain to continental Europe by rail, said that services at the Ashford terminal in Kent, near where the quake hit, were unaffected.

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