Pendle 'Witch' Trial Trail
Background Trail Map Tercets in Detail Comments Double Trouble START
TRAIL
Take this Pendle 'Witch' Trial Trail in the shadow of Pendle Hill (above). You can find the places where the key characters, in the infamous Pendle 'Witch' Trial of 1612, lived. You will notice that the grand mansions of the landed gentry are still here, but the hovels of those accused of witchcraft are hard to find.
Our present trail has to go a long way round, while in their day people could walk in straight lines. This was because the Pendle Forest was 'king's land, and not yet 'enclosed'.
The trail starts from the M65 Motorway, so is useful for visitors to the area coming to see what went on, and finishes back near the motorway.
TRIAL
The infamous Pendle Witches Trial took place at Lancaster in 1612. Hence the logo on Pendle Hill 400 years later in 2012!
The events described here took place just a few years after Guy Fawkes had tried to blow up parliament and Shakespeare had written Macbeth for James 1.- where there was 'bubble, bubble, toil and trouble'. Paranoia was rife and royal. It led to 10 people local to Pendle Forest, being executed in August 1612 at Lancaster prison.
'Imagine how they might have spent their final four months in captivity whilst awaiting trial' See TAKEN set in Clitheroe Castle, on their way to Lancaster.
Before you start, you may want to check out the Background issues.
The Pendle Witches would better called the Pendle 'Wretches', as they led a wretched life and met a wretched death.
When you drive round, it goes a long way compared to those days when there were no private boundaries as the land had not been enclosed. So people could walk in straight lines - so these events then do not seem so far apart.
This trial trail will take you most of a leisurely day (there is a half-day short cut) . As you go round you can collect points for seeing signs of the past (2pts), memories of the past - tercets (3pts) and actual remnants from the events (5pts). There are lots of places to stop off and have a drink to discuss your findings. We will signpost interesting spots as we go round.
The hanging was executed when the cart carrying the wretches was pushed away
The names of the 10 Pendle witches who were hanged on Gallows Hill are:
Anne Chattox (Anne Whittle),
Anne Redfern, Elizabeth Device,
James Device, Alizon Device, Jane Bullock, John Bullock, Katherine Hewitt (Mouldheels),
Alice Nutter and Isobel Robey.
Jennet Preston, who lived in Yorkshire, was hanged in York. Owd Demdike (Elizabeth Southerns), leader of the Demdike family, escaped the executioner by dying in her cell in Lancaster.
Katherine Hewitt (Mouldheels)
TERCETS
There are ten 'tercets' commemorating the trial, along 51 mile path from Barrowford to Lancaster.
Read Carol Ann Duffy's poem commemorating the events 400 years previously.
Pointy Hats & Broomsticks
In the classic images of witches, they have pointy hats, and ride round on a broomstick and cook in a cauldron? What is this all about?
It stems from when women were pushed out of beer making, Women who brewed ale at home were known in medieval Europe as “alewives. Ale being a necessity of life as any of those other chores, given that fermented beverages were often safer to drink than water. If a household could produce enough beyond their own immediate needs, the women of the house often left a broomstick outside, indicating ale was available within.
She also took their goods to market to make a little extra money. In order to catch as many eyes as possible, and to signal from a distance what they were selling, these “brewsters” wore tall hats. As a cottage industry, there was very little oversight or regulation to the home-grown brewing businesses. Rod Phillips in Alcohol: A History explains there were also large-scale commercial breweries, widely owned by men, which were leveraging new technologies and making larger quantities of product. As these operations grew as a "real" profession, women were by and large excluded.
According to Judith Bennett, both the public and the male-dominated brewing industry accused brewsters of diluting or adulterating their ale with cheaper brews, and thus of cheating customers. Brewsters were also accused of selling tainted ales that could make drinkers sick, perhaps intentionally. At this time, a woman having a working knowledge of herbal concoctions and medicines was highly suspect (as Lucy Worsley spells out in BBC programme) The sign of the humble alewife’s hat came to be associated with all the same evil maliciousness of a poison-peddling witch.
Christina Wade of the blog Braciatrix, questions whether all brewsters, across Europe, had pointy hats and also the role of the 'alestick' - leaning on a wall, indicating a cauldron of beer inside.
Whatever the truth, it seems to fit the overall plot that domestic work of women has often been devalued and erased by men who came to dominate the industries that were built on those skills, especially those in the kitchen More
Perhaps now is the time to hear the voices of these poor wretches.
