I receiv’d your favor and am happy that I have it in my power to give you some information relative to the affair. Dr. Blagden and self being appointed a Committee by the President and Council of the Royal Society to go down and collect all the facts that we possibly could on the spot. The Accident happened last June at a House of Industry at Heckingham about eleven miles beyond Norwich. It is built in the form of a Roman the distance from a to b above 108 feet and the width of a and b above 31 feet. Our Report has been read to the Royal Society which took up a whole nights reading we do not know yet whether it will be published I will endeavour to give you as concise an account as I can. To the Chimnies of the Building were fixed eight Iron pointed conductors composed of Iron bars about six or eight feet in length and about ½ an inch square joined together and the points were about 4½ feet above the Chimneys and the Chimneys were about 3½ feet above the Roof they had only four terminations one of which terminated in air in a privy without having any thing nearer than 6 or 8 inches. Three others in one termination in air in a drain and was several inches distant from any thing except touching one of the rusty iron bars of an iron grating between which it passed. Two others terminated in a brick’d channel also in one termination and the end rested against the side of a brick about six inches under the Surface of the earth where no moisture could come except what soaked through the Channel. Two others also in one Termination terminated on the bricks in a drain this drain was to carry off the water in the fore court and when we saw it, there was two or three inches of sludge in it, It must be observ’d that this drain emptied water into a Cispool about 70 feet from the end of the Conductor and had a fall of about two feet. This Cispool resembles a bricked well and had a bricked bottom which contained the foul stagnate water which could not rise above a certain height on account of a large drain leading from it into a reservoir at a great distance this height is 3½ feet so that the lightning if it had passed that way must jumped 3½ feet down to the surface of the water in this Cispool one of these conductors which was the nearest to were the accident happened was 69 feet from the damaged place and was composed of 10 iron bars joined together by their ends being turned up and passed through holes made in the other bars, and fastened together by screw nuts All the ends of the roof of this buildings is hip’d off and the hips are covered with lead but no part of the top of the roof has any except the top of the hips and valleys and the distance from the nearest conductor to the lead on the hips is about 42 feet the roof was covered with pantiles. The stroke of the lightning appeared to be at the end of the hip as at c it there turned up the lead and set fire to the wood work under it but was extinguish’d without doing any considerable damage. The whole space and the burnt and smoaked part was about 16 inches square it then passed down each side of the corner of the wall and made a furrow in the bricks it then struck on these bricks on the wall of a Stable joining which bricks were broke as small as nuts as we were informed it then passed along the roof of the Stable and displaced and broke the tiles I suppose by jumping to the nails which nail’d down the pantile laths and was not above 11 inches assunder till it came nearly over a saddle which hung in the stable it then fused the surface of one of the Stirrups irons tore all the leather off the seat of the saddle and burnt the stirrup leather from thence seemed to have passed along the girts the (ends of which hung in the water the stable being overflowed at that time) and so to a dram close to the Stable for carrying off the Stale of the horses.

The lightning appears to have picked out the best and nearest conductors to the moist earth for this drain or cispool by the Stable had no other provision for carrying off the stale of the horses but by soaking into the earth which was the reason of the Stable being over flowed from the great quantity of rain which fell before the stroke: according to the Account we receiv’d the lightning came in the direction of the corner were the fire happened I forgot to mention that under the cap of lead which covered the lead of the termination of the two hips at the end of the building were the Accident happened we found marks of fusion two on the underside of the cap corresponding with two on the upperside of the lead which the cap covered and which was above forty two feet from the ne[arest?] conductor.

There was no marks of fusion that we could discover on any of the conductors but they were considerably rusted. I hope you will have a tolerable idea of the affair without drawings it was seven months after the Accident happened that we was there. I am Sir Your obliged Humble Servant