18 May 2023, Starts: 17:30, Ends: 18:30

Myth, reality and romantic revelations: tracing a biography of heritage on Dartmoor (1638-2020)

Talk by David C Harvey, associate professor in critical heritage studies at Aarhus University, Denmark, and an honorary professor of historical and cultural geography at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom).

Venue: Burghfield House, Dornoch, or online through Cisco Webex. Further information and the joining link on our History Talks Live website

This talk explores the biography of an early-modern heritage narrative connected to a violent storm that occurred on 21st October 1638 in the village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor on Dartmoor (SW England). Several people died as they sheltered in the Church and accounts of the event soon started to circulate. The talk examines the nexus between accounts that emerged over the following months and years of ‘ball lightning’ and associated revelations both of God’s vengeance and the Devil’s trickery. The talk will also consider how situated heritage narratives of the event acted as a lesson for personal religious conduct, heralded a hesitant early scientific investigation, acted as a marque of elite taste, and eventually became infused with romantic yearning to explain an unusual archaeological feature in the landscape.