Several families in Stamford Hill were left temporarily homeless after a 60 foot tree fell on their block of flats as the ferocious St Jude Storm took its toll on Hackney this morning.

Residents of Laindon House in the Stamford Hill Estate, Stamford Hill woke up to see a 90 to 110-year-old tree on top of their housing block.

The tree had crashed on to the roof at around 6.30am – knocking off the chimney, breaking a top-floor flat window and almost causing the ceiling to collapse.

Top-floor flat resident Patricia Roberts said that it sounded like a plane had landed on the roof. The 43-year-old accountant said: “I heard a great big thud. It sounded like a plane had fallen out of the sky and landed on the roof. My nephew and niece were screaming.”

Southern Housing Association have been making repairs to the building and say that families should hopefully be able to return home this evening.

In Clapton a 26-year-old man was taken to hospital after he was hit by part of a falling tree near Clapton Common just before 6.50am.

He was found suffering from neck and head pain by an ambulance crew and a responder in a car, which attended the scene. He was taken to the Royal London Hospital.

Another man in Clapton Common was taken to hospital after a chimney stack collapsed leaving him trapped in the building. Fire crews from Stoke Newington had to cut through a wall to free the man.

Elsewhere in the borough, people woke up to fallen tree branches, billboards, broken bollards and other debris littered on the streets after hurricane winds of up to 80 miles per hour tore through London between 5am and 10am.

Firefighters from Homerton fire station closed half of Marsh Hill in Homerton for half an hour from 1pm after a 25 foot broken branch was suspended from a tree beside the Walley Foster community centre in Homerton Road.

On Manor Park Road, drivers and pedestrians found scaffolding strewn across the pavement and road, obscuring traffic eastwards towards Stamford Hill.

The council have closed all gated parks including Clissold Park in Stoke Newington Church Street, Stoke Newington, Abney Park cemetery in Stoke Newington High Street, Stoke Newington, Millfields Park in Lea Bridge Road, Clapton and Springfield Park in Springfield, Clapton until tomorrow morning in order to do a clean-up operation.

The London Fields Lido was closed until 2pm today.