73 
The church at Crumpsall is about a mile distant from 
that at Kersal Moor, and the ignition of the gas by light- 
ning, which undoubtedly caused its destruction, is not so 
distinctly traceable as it is in other cases which have come 
under my observation, because the evidences of the passage 
of the electric discharge have been obliterated by the fire. 
From information, however, communicated to me by the 
clerk in charge of the building, as to the arrangement of the 
gas pipes, the most probable course of the electric discharge 
was ultimately found. 
The church is provided with a copper lightning conductor, 
which descends outside the spire and tower as far as the 
level of the roof. The conductor then enters a large iron 
down-spout, and from thence is carried into the same drain 
as that in which the spout discharges itself. Immediately 
under the roof of the nave, and against the wall, a line of 
iron gas pipe extended parallel with the horizontal lead 
gutter which conveyed the water from the roof to the iron 
spout in which the conductor was enclosed. This line of 
gas-piping, though not in use for some time previous to the 
fire, was in contact with the pipes connected with the meter 
in the vestry, where the fire originated, and was not more 
than three feet distant from the lead gutter on the roof. As 
no indications of the electric discharge having taken place 
through the masonry w T ere found, as in the case of the 
church at Kersal Moor, it seems highly probable that the 
lightning left the conductor at the point where the latter 
entered the iron spout, and by traversing the space between 
the leaden gutter and the line of gas-piping in the roof, 
found a more easy path to the earth by the gas mains than 
was provided for it in the drain. 
