Qualla: The Great Thunderstorm

The Great Thunderstorm: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Manfred Heyde, CC BY-SA 4.0. It was an afternoon service, ordinary in every way that mattered, until the sky over Dartmoor went strange. The date was 21 October 1638. Inside the granite-walled church of St Pancras at Widecombe-in-the-Moor, roughly three hundred parishioners had gathered to hear the Reverend George Lyde preach. Then a darkness pressed against the windows that should not have come at that hour, and thunder shook the moor like something with intent. Witnesses afterward spoke of a great ball of fire that ripped through a window, tore part of the roof open, and rebounded through the nave. Four of the worshippers never went home. Around sixty more were injured. The church itself was nearly destroyed. What happened that Sunday is now considered one of the earliest recorded accounts of ball lightning in human history.

Read more: The Great Thunderstorm on Qualla

Image: Manfred Heyde | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Great Thunderstorm: What the Witnesses Saw

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original artist unknown, fl 17th century. Scanned by me 2008-10-13., Public domain. The accounts published within months of the disaster read like reports from a battle. The minister escaped unharmed, but his wife was found with her ruff and the linen next to her skin burned through, her body burnt in what one chronicler called a very pitiful manner. A local war...

Read more: The Great Thunderstorm on Qualla

Image: Original artist unknown, fl 17th century. Scanned by me 2008-10-13. | Public domain

The Great Thunderstorm: The Devil at Poundsgate

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original artist unknown, fl 17th century. Scanned by me 2008-10-13., Public domain. Seventeenth-century Dartmoor did not need scientific explanations for what science could not yet name. Within days, a legend had taken hold across the parish, and it has never quite let go. The story said that the storm was no storm at all. The devil himself had come to Widecombe...

Read more: The Great Thunderstorm on Qualla

Image: Original artist unknown, fl 17th century. Scanned by me 2008-10-13. | Public domain

The Great Thunderstorm: Four Aces on the Moor

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original artist unknown, fl 17th century. Scanned by me 2008-10-13., Public domain. The legend continues, as such legends do, with a flight across the sky. The devil tethered his horse to one of the pinnacles of Widecombe Church, seized the sleeping Jan, and rode away into the storm. As they passed over Birch Tor, the four aces from Jan's pack tumbled from his h...

Read more: The Great Thunderstorm on Qualla

Image: Original artist unknown, fl 17th century. Scanned by me 2008-10-13. | Public domain

The Great Thunderstorm: A Place That Holds Its Stories

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original artist unknown, fl 17th century. Scanned by me 2008-10-13., Public domain. Widecombe-in-the-Moor sits in a green basin ringed by tors, a village that gave its name to the folk song every English schoolchild has heard at some point in their life. The church of St Pancras still stands, its 120-foot tower visible for miles across the moor, which is why it ...

Read more: The Great Thunderstorm on Qualla

Image: Original artist unknown, fl 17th century. Scanned by me 2008-10-13. | Public domain