Lightning

The violent thunderstorms that accompany hot and sultry weather are a reminder of how man is at the mercy of the elements when these meteorological phenomena occur and the wonderment and fear with which they were regarded in past times.

Even today, the sight of forked lightning seen from my study widow, streaking from an ominously darkened sky to earth out there over the fen towards Dyke is enough to make one catch the breath and marvel at the forces of nature but imagine what it was like before man understood the reason why this was happening and he can be forgiven for thinking that this was a supernatural manifestation or that magical powers were at work.

Lightning is a massive electrostatic discharge within clouds or between a cloud and the earth's surface, the subsequent flash being commonly known as a strike if it hits an object on the ground. This phenomenon occurs approximately 40-50 times a second worldwide, resulting in nearly 1.4 billion flashes per year. Strikes are less frequent today because modern science has helped us take precautions through the use of conductors which will safeguard buildings and other tall installations although the countryside remains at risk as was seen at Stainfield, near Bourne, last month when a farm workshop was struck, exploding a gas canister and starting a massive blaze which took eight fire crews several hours to bring under control.

But imagine the consternation before this scientific explanation could be understood. The earliest detailed account we have of lightning over Bourne is from 1800 and a vivid description survives of a fierce storm at Morton, written by the Rev Samuel Hopkinson, Vicar of St John the Baptist Church, who said that villagers were assembled in the church for morning service on Sunday 4th May when a darkness descended over the village as the storm broke accompanied by a mighty wind. “With several others I immediately ascended the steeple”, he wrote. “But no mind can comprehend, no tongue can tell, no pen can represent the scene now exhibited to the astonished sight. The fury of the storm became excessive. The sun withdrew its shining and a partial darkness overspread the land. We could neither stand without support, see with difficulty or hear anything except the elements of disorder and we quickly descended for safety into the nave.”

The church shook as the wind roared, the thunder pealed and the lightning flashed, he wrote. Nature seemed to be struggling for her very existence. For over half an hour, monstrous hailstones rained on the building like musket balls, peppering the stonework and windows, shattering many and even dislodging the frames which fell down into the nave. “The confused noise occasioned by the rushing wind, by the glass and hail, by the shrieks of the women, the cries of the children, together with the dismay visible in the faces of all, was much increased by a sudden hollow explosion, not unlike a gun discharged either in a cavern or with its muzzle close to a wall. This was soon discovered to be the effect of lightning, which struck and scorched the leg of a young man, who had retreated with many more under a pillar of the western entrance for safety.”

As the storm abated, villagers plucked up courage to venture outside and to return to their homes to find the widows of the properties to the south and south west almost entirely demolished. Of 121 panes in the eight sash windows in the western front of the vicarage house, only 21 were saved, which was owing to the sashes being left up. Towards the south, of five windows with 281 panes, there were only 23 left and the damage was similar in the surrounding villages of Stainfield, Haconby, Dunsby, and Rippingale. “The  cottage of the poor man as well as the mansions of the rich suffered in the general wreck”, wrote Hopkinson. “None hath escaped God’s avenging arm. Here was a scene the most awful and extraordinary I ever witnessed through the course of my life, such as I supposed as had not been displayed from the beginning of time.”

In past times, lightning was not fully understood and even in the early 20th century is was being referred to as “the electric fluid” as though it were some mighty liquid flame about the engulf all in its path. Farm workers out in the open were frequently killed after being struck, an occurrence regarded in many areas as an act of God and newspaper descriptions of these terrible tragedies give the impression that they were regarded in awe but an inevitable part of life.

In June 1848 for instance, the Stamford Mercury reported that three sheep were killed by lightning in a field at Aslackby and at Graby, a servant girl "was knocked down by the electric fluid and much hurt, but is now recovering.” At Folkingham, the hailstones which fell were "as large as marbles, the oldest man scarcely recollects such a tempest".

There were also tragedies and in the summer of 1871 a twelve-year-old lad, William Fisher, was working with his father in the fields in Bourne Fen when a violent storm of hail and rain with vivid flashes and heavy peals of thunder passed overhead. According to a local newspaper “he was struck by the electric fluid and killed instantaneously” and an inquest later returned a verdict that he had been killed by lightning.

Another lad, Samuel Northern, aged eleven years, son of a labourer from Eastgate, was killed in September 1878 while working with a gang of boys hoeing coleseed. They sought shelter near a haystack from a sudden storm but there was a flash of lightning which struck them all down, killing Northern and injuring two others.  A doctor who examined the unfortunate boy’s body found that his hair was singed, his clothes rent in shreds from top to bottom and there were burn marks on various parts of the body.

Animals left in the fields are particularly at risk and in 1848, three sheep were killed at Aslackby, a horse was killed near the toll bar in Mill Drove in 1862 together with two sheep at Rippingale and in June 1874, a bullock was killed in the North Fen. Houses in Eastgate were struck in 1902, Hereward Street in 1907 and in Abbey Road and Woodview in 1910 although generally, lightning causes greater fear from its visual effects than its physical manifestation.

In June 1886, for instance, a local newspaper reported that “a fine old oak tree in a hedgerow on the Spalding Road was struck by the electric fluid and completely shattered in all directions, so much so that not a perfect foot of good wood has been left in the tree. A farmhouse close by had a very narrow escape, several windows being broken. During Sunday afternoon and evening and also during the past week, several hundred people have journeyed to the spot, which is about half a mile from the town, in order to obtain a view of such an uncommon sight.”

In 1889, the Corn Exchange was struck by lightning but no serious damage was done although the weather vane to which the point of the lightning conductor was attached was bent and the wire was twisted throughout its length to the earth. There was a more serious lightning strike during a heavy storm in 1960 when Bourne Hospital in South Road was hit, cutting off the power supply and causing serious damage to the electrical installations. Subsequent repairs involved rewiring the entire hospital at a cost of £5,000 (almost £100,000 at today's values).

Despite these occurrences, damage or death by lightning is a rare occurrence yet it remains a powerful image in our lives and imagination mainly because its appearance is so impressive, accompanied by wind and thunder and lighting up the countryside as though Armageddon were imminent and so it is not surprising that, despite our scientific enlightenment, its effect on us today is much the same as it has been on man down the ages.

REVISED MARCH 2014