Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh — Black Shuck

OVERVIEW

A great fifteenth-century church above the Blyth estuary on the Suffolk coast, with a clerestory of windows and angels along its roof. On Sunday 4 August 1577 a thunderstorm broke over the county during morning service; at Bungay and then at Blythburgh, according to Abraham Fleming's pamphlet A straunge and terrible Wunder printed that year, a black dog ran through the congregation, wringing the necks of two people at prayer at Bungay and killing a man and a boy at Blythburgh before the steeple fell through the roof. The burn marks on the inside of the north door are pointed out as its claw marks.

HISTORY

Black Shuck is the East Anglian black dog — Old Shuck, the Dog-fiend — first named in print in Notes and Queries in 1850 and recorded across Norfolk, Suffolk and the Fens as an omen or a companion on lonely roads. Fleming was a London editor writing from reports; the parish records of the storm exist, the dog is his.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The 1577 pamphlet is the founding document of British black-dog lore and Blythburgh's door is its relic. Sightings of a black dog on the marshes and the A12 were still being reported to folklorists in the twentieth century. The entry records a printed tradition four centuries old.

VISITING

Open daily; the marks are on the north door inside the church. A working parish church.