Daniel Defoe reflecting on Chichester

1722 Daniel Defoe

… and yet I cannot say much for the city fo Chichester, in which, if six or seven good families were removed, there would not be much conversation, except what is to be found among the canon, and dignitaries of the cathedral.

The cathedral here is not the finest in England, but is far from being the most ordinary: The Spire is a piece of excellent workmanship, but it received such a shock about --- years ago, that it was next to miraculous, that the whole steeple did not fall down; which in short, if it had, would almost have demolish'd the whole church.

It was a fire-ball, if we take it from the inhabitants, or, to speak in the language of nature, the lightening broke upon the steeple and such was the irresistable force of it, that it drove several great stones out of the steeple and carry'd them clear off, not from the rood of the church only, but from the adjacent houses also, and they were found at a prodigious distance from the steeple, so that they must have been shot out of a cannon, or blown out of a mine: One of these stones of at least a ton weight, by estimation, was blown over the south side, or row of houses in the West-Street, and fell on the ground in the street at a gentleman's door, on the other side of the way; and another of them almost as big was blown over both sides of the said West-Street, into the same gentleman's garden, at whose door the other stone lay, and no hurt was done by either of them; whereas if either of those stones had fallen upon the strongest built house in the street, it would have dash'd it all to pieces, even to the foundation: This account of the two stone I relate from a person of undoubted credit, who was an eye-witness, and saw them, but had not the curiousity to measure them, which he was very sorry for. The breach it made in the spire, tho' within about forty five feet of the top, was so large, that as the workmen said to me, a coach and six horses might have driven through it, and yet the steeple stood fast, and is now very substantially repair'd; withal, showing that it was before, an admirable sound and well finished piece of workmanship.