WINDS of up to 80 miles per hour hit east London and Essex this morning as extreme weather swept the country.

Epping market has become one of the first casualties of the storm.

The High Street market stalls were assembled as usual in the morning but had to be quickly taken down as high winds and rain made them unstable.

Town clerk Bob Whittome said: "The market was set up as normal because you can never tell how bad something will be.

"The market traders were able to set up goods but they went off the idea and we brought the stalls down as quickly as we could.

"I think we all accepted they couldn't work in this kind of storm.

"To some extent it's health and safety - it can be dangerous to have metal things flying around.

"I've been here eight years and only pulled the plug on it a couple of times in all the time I've been here."

Defending the decision to assemble the market he added: "The media like to hype up the weather and we have storm warnings quite frequently. If we paid attention to all of them we'd never run a market."

Among other damage caused by the storm were reports that power lines in Ongar had come down.

The Met Office said gusts of 50 miles per hour were expected in the area this evening.

A spokesman said: "People should take care when they are going out. There may be parts of trees across roads. I would advise people to a bit more patient with the road network and railways, Tubes and buses."

He added that the windy weather is likely to remain for the next four days with Wednesday being predicted as the worst.

A spokesman for Traffic Master, which monitors Britain's roads, said: "The QE2 bridge which spans the Thames on the M25 was closed at 6am today but was re-opened at 11am.

He added there have been no other incidents in north or east London.

The south coast, western England and Wales have been battered by vicious winds of up to 82 miles per hour and 10,000 homes have been left without electricity.

There has also been minor flooding around the coast but the Environment Agency said the windy weather has not been as it feared.