Category Archives: Witchcraft

The Curse of Pendle

28 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by in History, Radio, Witchcraft

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Installation on Pendle Hill: photo by Brett Dixon/BBC, 2012.

The Curse of Pendle is a 30-minute documentary, broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on November 23rd, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Lancashire Witch Trials. It is presented by the novelist Jeanette Winterson, who grew up in Accrington, within view of Pendle Hill.

‘We all knew the stories of Chattox and Demdike – names you’d never forget,’ Winterson recalls. ‘Were they witches? Did they still haunt the hill? It scared us kids to death.’ Continue reading →

1612 Underture

27 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in Film, History, Music, Witchcraft

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The Eccentronic Research Council (ERC) is a collective founded by Sheffield musicians Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer.

1612 Underture, their new concept album, also features the Bolton-born actress Maxine Peake. Continue reading →

The Pendle Witch Child

19 Friday Aug 2011

Posted by in History, Television, Witchcraft

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Simon Armitage – one of Britain’s leading poets – was born in West Yorkshire. Like many local children, he would have been raised on stories of the Pendle Witches in nearby Lancashire.

A grimly intoxicating blend of history, crime and folklore is richly evoked in Armitage’s new BBC Four documentary, The Pendle Witch Child. Next year marks the fourth centenary of the notorious 1612 trial, the largest of its kind in England at the time. Continue reading →

Wicked Enchantments

24 Saturday Jul 2010

Posted by in Books, History, Non-Fiction, Witchcraft

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Wicked Enchantments: A History of the Pendle Witches and Their Magic by Joyce Froome

With its 400th anniversary approaching, the Pendle witch trial of 1612 is once again the focus of historical discussion. What was the largest investigation of its kind in England (until the Matthew Hopkins purges in East Anglia some thirty years later) is now, ironically, a mainstay of the East Lancashire tourist industry.

In 2007, John C. Clayton’s The Lancashire Witch Conspiracy brought a new focus on local history and genealogy to the now legendary case. This year, Joyce Froome, an assistant curator at the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall, has brought her own knowledge of magic to the table. Continue reading →