Rambles among the Channel Islands / by a Naturalist.

Date:
[1855?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rambles among the Channel Islands / by a Naturalist. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    56/402 (page 44)
    At a period subsequent to these events, Castle Cornet became again an object of most painful attention in consequence of an awful calamity which befell that fortress during the governor- ship of Lord Hatton, the second of that name. The event is sufficiently remarkable to merit one extracting an account of it which is given by Dicey in his History of the Island of Guernsey:—“ On the night of Sunday, De- cember 29, 1672, the magazine of this castle was blown up by lightning. The night was very stormy and tempestuous, and the wind blew hard at south-west, to w'hich aspect the door of the magazine exactly fronted, and the thunder- bolt which caused this dreadful calamity, was ‘heard to come circling, or serpentining over the platform from the south-west. In an in- stant of time, not only the whole magazine, was blown up into the air, but also all the houses and lodgings of the castle.’ The resi- dence of the governor, together with the other buildings, were in a few minutes reduced to a confused heap of stones, and several houses lay bulled in the ruins. In the upper part of the castle Lady Hatton, mother of the governor, was killed by the fall of the ceiling of her apartment. The lady of the governor, terrified at the extraordinary fury of the tempest, had previously insisted on being removed to the