THE FEARFUL DAMAGE OCCASIONED BY LIGHTNING TO UGBOROUGH CHURCH TOWER
A report by J.N. Hearder
The church tower is a fine substantial building, about 500 years old, constructed of granite: the buttresses, windows, string courses, battlements and pinnacles being executed in massive blocks of the same stone. It is rather over 90 feet high to the battlements and is about 20 feet square at the top. It is surmounted by four pinnacles, each 16 feet high and about 3 feet diameter at the base, octagonal in shape and constructed of massive granite blocks. Each pinnacle has on its top an ornamental iron cross, the shaft of which passes down through the top stone, a length of about 2 feet and is dowelled about 2 inches into the next below. The N.E. pinnacle has also in addition a vane spindle attached to its cross, standing some three or four feet above it. The battlements are about 4 feet 6 inches high, 9 inches thick at the top and about 18 inches thick at the level of the tower roof, which was covered with lead and drained by four short leaden spouts, but without any descending rain pipes.
The lightning must have come from the N.W. in an oblique direction, since it struck the iron cross in the N.W. pinnacle and not the vane of the N.E. one, which, as I stated was 4 feet higher. This N.W. pinnacle was dashed to pieces, the massive granite blocks of which it was constructed being dispersed in all directions, north, south, east and west. Two of the stones, over 1 cwt. each passed over the tower and fell through the roof of the church, demolishing the seats upon which they fell. Others were thrown to a distance of 60 to 100 feet and now lie embedded in the graveyard, having passed obliquely into the ground to such a depth as to be completely buried beneath the sod; one of these must be 3 cwt; another weighing considerably more than 1 cwt., was hurled across the top of the tower into a meadow about 100 yards off. Two others were cast to a distance of 100 feet and fell through the roofs of two cottages, passing down through the floors and burying themselves in the ground below; one of the stones passed through a bed from which a man had risen to go to his daily work only half an hour previously. The entire battlements on the west face and half the battlements on the north face are completely demolished; large portions were dashed down through the flat roof of the tower, crushing the beams and passing through the bell chamber, destroying the wheels and portions of the framework of the bells and then breaking through the beams and flooring into the clock chamber below, where the clock case was dashed to pieces, partly by the lightning and partly by the debris which fell upon it, severely injuring the clock. Other portions of the battlements, together with part of the north west corner of the tower, were scattered in all directions over a radius, extending in some cases 100 yards, strewing the ground with tons of masonry. The rain and hail came down with such fury that everyone sought shelter within doors, otherwise the loss of life would have been fearful to contemplate, since the thoroughfares around the church would have contained a great number of men going to their daily work, who must have inevitably been killed by the missiles which were flying in all directions. I never met with such terrific effects or such explosive power.
My chief object in visiting the scene of the disaster was to trace accurately the course which the lightning had taken, which I will briefly describe.
The tower, as I have stated, had no descending metal rain pipe, consequently it was totally unprotected and the lightning had therefore to find it’s way to the ground through such portions of metal as were most conveniently situated to help in its track. The top stone through which the iron spindle passed is not in any way injured, though the stone below it was cracked and shaken in several places; the lightning after destroying the pinnacle passed down inside the angle of the tower, melting only the corner of the lead flat just where it passed down through, but shivering and displacing the heavy masonry and splitting the arches of the windows by its concussion, until it arrived opposite an iron bolt, which was connected with the hangings of the large clock bell, passing to this bolt and thence to the bell, it next leaped from the bell to the hammer, a distance of about three inches, melting the surfaces of both bell and hammer, over a space of about two square inches. The marks of fusion were beautifully evident and exhibited the characteristics of the two metals and were some distance from the marks produced by the action of the hammer in striking the bell and consequently could not be mistaken for them. From the tail of the hammer an iron chain about 30 feet long lead down to the lever of the striking movement of the clock. This chain was composed of No. 10 iron wire and was made in links about nine inches long, formed by bending the extremities into eyes which were looped into each other, the ends being twisted back over the wire for additional strength. The only vestiges which can be found of this chain are the eyes which are linked together. The whole of the wire, which was single, having been melted as far as the twisted portion and dissipated in dust of oxide of iron. The deflagration splitting and staining the wood portions of the clock-framing near which it hung from the clock , it passed out through the bar which leads to the leaden clock face, from the lower side of which it passed round the north east of the tower to a lead gutter on the roof of the Church. In its course it passed behind a massive granite buttress which it dislodged from its situation and likewise melted not only the edge of the clock face, which it left, but the edge of the lead gutter where it entered. This lead gutter passed along by the eaves of the roof until it reached an iron rain pipe at the end of the church, which lead into the ground. These acted as adequate conductors for the electric fluid and through them it passed without doing any further damage. The whole fabric was so shaken by the concussion that not only were nearly all the windows broken, but two out of the three pinnacles remaining on the tower were started quite one inch from their original positions and this in a direction towards the damaged corner, thus showing the tremendous and sudden reaction which must have taken place throughout the whole of the upper part of the tower.
The circumstances worthy of note here, are first: that a moderate difference between the relative heights of the tops of pinnacles is not sufficient to draw the lightning out of its course. The erection of a lightning conductor, therefore, at one end of a house does not prevent the other end from being struck. Second, the damage is produced, not where the metals are, but where they are not. Third, if the conducting metal, as in the case of the chain, be not a sufficiently good conductor, it is melted by the discharge and fourth, the lightning is very nice in the selection of the shortest distance, as in the case of its passage from the clock face to the lead gutter, where it chose rather to slip in behind the granite buttress than to curl around it.
It was only twelve years ago that at a vestry meeting at Ugborough, it was proposed to protect the church by a lightning conductor, but the parishioners objected on the ground that as it had stood for 500 years, it might be as likely to go 500 years longer without injury. So much for the present spread of electrical science.
J. N. HEARDER, D.Sc, Ph.D., F.C.S. 195 Union Street, Plymouth. Dec.6th. 1872