THIS youth is sitting outside a Morton Banks house struck by lightning in 1893, collecting money from curious sightseers.

Ridingate, a former farmhouse occupied by the Clayton family, stood near the road up to Ilkley Moor.

During a violent thunderstorm one June afternoon, lightning struck a chimney, demolishing roof and gable, severing a water pipe and dislodging heavy stone drain covers ten yards away.

Plaster and paper were stripped off bedroom walls, curtains, bedclothes and clothing in a wardrobe set a on fire, and windows blown out. The legs of an armchair were "cut off as if by a saw". Furniture was reduced to matchwood and clothes to rags.

Mrs Clayton was deafened and concussed, and her 15-year-old daughter flung unconscious across a table. Fortunately passers-by sheltering in the vicinity included two doctors who arrived promptly on the scene, and both recovered. The only fatalities were a cat and three pigeons in a cote in the garden.

However, the Claytons had lost nearly all their possessions. The vicar of Riddlesden launched an appeal on their behalf, which raised £70, a sum considered "adequate for restoring the home which was so completely wrecked".