Castle Cornet Explodes 30 December 1672

Asleep in his bedchamber, Governor of Guernsey Viscount Christopher Hatton was suddenly awoken - by hailstones on his face. His mother lay dead beneath the remains of a ceiling, his house lay in ruins around him. At Castle Cornet that night, the windows would have been rattling - but several people slept right through what happened at around midnight.
Lightning struck the castle's magazine, housed in the donjon or keep, the oldest part of the fortress, unleashing the deadly force of all the stockpiled gunpowder in an explosion that caused terrible damage.
As the historian, Ferdinand Brock Tupper, reported in his 1851 book, Chronicles of Castle Cornet, based on a first-hand account: 'In an instant of time not only the whole of the magazine was blown up in the air, but also the houses and lodgings of the castle, particularly some fair and beautiful buildings that had just before been erected at great expense.'
The Governor, Viscount Christopher Hatton, was in residence along with his family.
The Rt Hon. Lady Dowager Hatton, the Governor's mother, was killed when the roof of her bedchamber fell in. Viscount Hatton's wife had insisted on moving from her room to the nursery, where she set about praying with one of her staff. When their ceiling fell in, the occupants of the room suffered different fates. Although her maid survived, Viscountess Hatton and a nurse, who was holding one of the Hattons' young children, died, while two other infants who slept in a cradle nearby were unharmed. Such was the devastation - a chaos of flying debris - that a silver cup which the eldest child was using was 'all rumpled and bruised'.
Meanwhile, in his quarters nearby, Viscount Hatton himself was 'carried away on his bed upon the battlements', which failed to wake him. He was roused only by the feel of hailstones on his face.
His house lay in ruins around him.

'A most miraculous preservation indeed,' said a writer named Dicey, quoted in Mr Tupper's chronicles, 'inasmuch as that the house wherein his lordship was so taken away was razed to the very ground, nothing of it being left standing but the door case.'
In a gallant and emotional, if confused, piece of thinking, Viscount Hatton offered £1,000 to whoever would bring his wife to him, safe and sound. She was not found until daylight and the only thing that was safe was his bank account.

Viscount Hatton's two sisters were hit by a falling beam but came through the ordeal with their lives.Another who lived to tell the tale was Sergeant Cotton, who was blown over a wall, still in his bed, coming to rest within inches of the mouth of a well. Briefly knocked unconscious, when he came to, he was challenged by another soldier, who thought he was a ghost.
After giving a list of those who perished in the castle that night, Mr Tupper tells of the effect on the island: 'This dreadful catastrophe filled the inhabitants of Guernsey with grief and consternation, as Viscount Hatton, by his paternal government, was already much endeared to them; and the Royal Court, deeming the sad event a special act of divine vengeance, appointed a fast day. This body also issued an order, forbidding all persons to purchase timber or any other article from the castle.' Could the implication be that a population accustomed to gratefully accepting whatever the sea washed up from shipwrecks would also be expected to make the most of the a terrible accident such as this?
You may not be surprised to hear that Guernsey’s (Lieutenant) Governors never lived in Castle Cornet after that event!

When Guernsey’s Chief Minister Laurie Morgan went to the Isle of Man in July 2006 for that island's annual Tynwald ceremony, he took a stone that had been part of the explosion all those centuries ago. It was a gift from Guernsey to go on the Isle of Man's cairn (a mound built as a memorial), as is traditional. I wonder whether that stone is still there...