IT WAS 12 years ago today, on July 9th, 1984, that York Minster was severely damaged by a fire started by a stroke of lightning.
A few ardent traditionalists were heard to whisper that the disaster might be a form of divine retribution for some of the more startling utterances of his lordship of the neighbouring diocese of Durham. But as I discovered on a recent drive to Darmstadt, Germany, to visit Eumetsat, it is rare to find a cathedral or church of any age in Europe that has not experienced a similar fate perhaps several times, indeed, throughout its life.
The Basilica of St Denis, just north of Paris, for example, is the burial place of almost all the kings of France, and looks incomplete with its single asymmetric tower. And so it is the north tower, it seems, was damaged by a lightning fire in 1859 and had to be demolished.
And on the coast of Normandy, the Abbey Church of Mont St Michel had a similar experience in the previous century apparently its new and some would say incongruous Georgian facade was added after its twin towered predecessor in the Romanesque style proved unequal to a thunderstorm in 1770.
Other stops on the trip provided more ecclesiastical connections with the weather. I was moved, for example, to stand by the tomb of one who has made a guest appearance more than once in Weather Eye.
Richard Kidder was bishop of Bath and Wells for 12 years from 1691. He and his good wife perished when the great storm of November, 1703, perhaps the most ferocious ever to have hit these islands, brought a chimney of the Bishop's Palace crashing down upon their conjugal bed.
The pair have been honoured with a suitably elaborate memorial in the cathedral at Wells, and in what is carefully called the "quire" there hangs a tapestry that shows Kidder's episcopal coat of arms under severe attack from figures representing the four, perhaps inappropriately cardinal, winds.
It was also interesting to contemplate the shrine to St Swithun in the cathedral at Winchester, where he was bishop for 10 years from 852 AD. The well known legend about rain on St Swithun's Day, July 15th, is related to the transfer of the saint's body in July, 971, from a humble grave outside the cathedral to a more luxurious, but allegedly unwanted, resting place inside.
Tales on the spot, however, suggest that the poor saint has been "translated", as they nicely put it, on so many occasions that now no one is quite sure where his bones lie but more of that upon St Swithun's Day.