On Thursday 15 July 1762, alongside the usual records of births, marriages and deaths, a rector in Norfolk noted in his parish register that “there happened a most violent storm of thunder, lightning, hail and rain, the violence of which resulted in the roof of Billockby parish church falling in, broking [sic] down the seats and causing great damage to the pulpit and desk”.
Entries of this kind are pretty common in parish registers although they were not required by the authorities. And, while not a comprehensive record of weather in the past, they do show how central concerns about the weather were to the communities in which our ancestors lived. Vicars tended to record events that particularly affected their immediate locality and the church itself, so there are, for example, many accounts of churchyards being so hard and frozen that graves couldn’t be dug. Such parochial accounts of the weather can not be searched for on indexes, but if you have the chance to read the original parish registers
