Well any aircraft can suffer a hard larding, regardless of age. I was a punter on a BA 747-400 landing at LHR last year in a 30 kt crosswind. We hit hard enough to make some of the cabin fittings came down, these things happen, sometimes the poor blighter at the pointy end is having a bad day, sometimes him up above is trying to make life difficult for us.
It is an old aeroplane though and those low by-pass ratio turbojets make a lot of noise and vibration, hence the windows and stuff rattling. Which runway did you land on? If it was 10, chance is they just used idle reverse (which would still make alot of noise and rattling) as the terminal buildings are at the far end of the runway. No point in hammering the reverse thrust and brakes to make the first exit when you can do a slow decel and vacate at the far end of the runway on the last RET and save a few minutes taxi time. This is a very common occurence at Stansted when 05 is in use, lots of people requesting "can we roll to the end" particularly if parking in the C or D culdusacs.
Hope that offers some explanation and relieves the fear you may have had a near death experience.