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King's Norton Church, Leicestershire, Struck by Lightning, 1850. Creator: Unknown
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King's Norton Church, Leicestershire, Struck by Lightning, 1850. Creator: Unknown
King's Norton Church, Leicestershire, Struck by Lightning, 1850. The tower, containing a peal of eight bells, with chimes, was surmounted by a spire, which formed the chief beauty of the building....This beautiful feature is now entirely destroyed. On Monday, May 13, during a sudden storm of thunder and lightning, which seemed to break immediately over the village, a flash struck the spire, and (without any exaggeration) shivered it in a moment into a thousand fragments...The stone which formed the finial of the spire fell upon and crushed the font...It is, moreover, the second calamity of the kind which has befallen [the parish] within the last seven years. This same spire was struck a first time in February, 1843...and the few inhabitants had only paid off the debt occasioned by the first stroke a few weeks before the time when the second fell'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850
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Media ID 36199330
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Alter Church Of St John The Baptist Damage Damaged Debris Gothic Revival Lightning Neo Gothic Rubble Spire Spires St John The Baptist Church Victorian Gothic
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EDITORS COMMENTS
King's Norton Church, Leicestershire (1850): A Gothic Revival Masterpiece Reduced to Rubble by the Fury of Nature This evocative print captures the somber aftermath of a devastating lightning strike that struck King's Norton Church in Leicestershire, England, in 1850. The once-majestic tower, adorned with a peal of eight bells and chimes, was the architectural jewel of this quaint village church, St. John the Baptist. The tower's crowning glory, a soaring spire, is now nothing more than a memory, obliterated in an instant by the raw power of a lightning bolt. The Illustrated London News reported that the storm of May 13, 1850, brought with it a violent display of thunder and lightning, which seemed to zero in on the village. The spire, the church's most distinctive feature, became the unfortunate target of the tempest's wrath. The flash of lightning not only shattered the spire into a thousand fragments but also caused the stone finial to crash down upon the font below, crushing it beyond recognition. Sadly, this was not the first time the church had suffered such a calamity. Only a few weeks before the second strike, the parishioners had managed to pay off the debt incurred from the first lightning strike, which had occurred in February 1843. The print, a poignant reminder of the capricious nature of the elements, invites us to reflect on the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity and the enduring beauty of the Gothic Revival architecture that once graced this picturesque village church.
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