Black Shuck
A black dog reported across East Anglia, and one Sunday morning in 1577 when a storm killed worshippers in two Suffolk churches. A London pamphleteer wrote it up as the devil, and Blythburgh still shows the scorch marks on its door.
Field Guide Entry
Sunday, August 4, 1577
A storm crossed Suffolk that morning with, in the words of the account written afterward, such darkness, rain, hail, thunder and lightning as was never seen the like. At St Mary's in Bungay the congregation was at prayer when something came up the nave, and two people died. At Holy Trinity in Blythburgh, the same morning, the steeple came down through the roof and more were killed.
"The divel in such a likenesse"
Abraham Fleming published A Straunge and Terrible Wunder before the year was out. In his telling a black dog ran the length of the church and wrung the necks of two worshippers where they knelt, and the phrase he used has stuck to the animal for four and a half centuries: "this black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse."
Fleming was a London clergyman and a prolific pamphleteer, writing for a London press, and there is nothing to suggest he went to Suffolk. The pamphlet is compiled from reports rather than witnessed, and it was made for a market that paid for wonders.
The reading available at the time and since is lightning. A strike severe enough to bring a steeple through a roof, entering at the tower and running down the length of the building, kills people in pews and leaves burns, and a storm that hit two churches in one morning needs no dog in it.
The door
Blythburgh keeps scorch marks on the north door and shows them as the Devil's fingerprints. They are the only physical object the story has, and they are what most visitors come for.
Bungay put the dog on its coat of arms and on the weathervane in the market place, and the town runs a festival named after it.
Visiting Information
Holy Trinity at Blythburgh is a working parish church, open every day from 9am until dusk. St Mary's at Bungay is no longer a parish church and is cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust, which opens it daily. Neither charges admission, and both ask for donations toward upkeep.
Holy Trinity at Blythburgh is the one to prioritize. It is a very large fifteenth-century church on a tidal estuary, known as the Cathedral of the Marshes, with a carved angel roof and the scorch-marked north door. St Mary's at Bungay is a ruin-adjacent town church with the priory remains beside it.
The two sit on opposite sides of the same stretch of Suffolk and are comfortably done in one day with a car. Check service times before planning a visit, since a Sunday morning will find Holy Trinity in use for its actual purpose.
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