A second earthquake has hit Cornwall in a week – leaving residents a little shaken by the minor tremor.

The British Geological Survey confirmed a signal at 12.04pm between Falmouth and Helston.

The data is now due to be analysed to determine its strength.

Kim Kimber, who lives near Falmouth, said: “Initially thought it might be thunder but there was not enough cloud. It felt wrong too.

“The whole house shook and the windows were rattling. I felt the vibration through the floor.

“If we lived near a quarry I might have thought they were blasting but nearest live quarry is a couple of miles away.”

Last week, an earlier earthquake struck parts of Cornwall – sending a low rumble through houses around the area.

But far from any fears of a major seismic shift, perhaps splitting Cornwall from the rest of mainland Britain, the quake measured only 0.8 on the Richter Scale.

Seismographs may have started scratching out a recording of the tremor, but a slight shock of this magnitude is known as a microearthquake, so minor that they are often not even felt except by specialist sensitive equipment.

Some residents in the area around Penryn in Cornwall – which was recorded as the epicentre by the British Geological Survey and private sites such as the Newquay Weather Station – reported the low rumble sound and slight ripples of shaking in their homes but the magnitude of the earthquake was too minor to cause any significant damage or concerns.

The earthquake struck the area around Penryn at 11.28pm on Wednesday night.

There have been minor tremors recorded in the UK in the past, with one of the biggest in 2008 when the highest magnitude quake recorded in 25 years hit parts of Newcastle, Yorkshire, Cumbria and the Midlands, measuring a 5.2 magnitude with an epicentre in Lincolnshire.