2-888-640 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

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.