27 Thursday Sep 2012
Posted in Film, History, Music, Witchcraft
≈ Comments Off on 1612 Underture
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1612 Underture, Adrian Flanagan, Dean Honer, Eccentronic Research Council, Kluncklick, Lancashire Witches, Lucy Hope, Maxine Peake, Pendle Witches, Sheffield
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
11 Wednesday Jul 2012
Posted in History, Theatre, Witchcraft
≈ Comments Off on Sabbat
Sabbat is a play by Richard Shannon, based on the trials of the Pendle Witches. It was first staged at the Dukes Theatre, Lancaster, in 2009, and has been revived for a nationwide tour, marking the 400th anniversary of the infamous witch-hunt. Continue reading
19 Friday Aug 2011
Posted in History, Television, Witchcraft
≈ Comments Off on The Pendle Witch Child
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Child Witnesses, Documentaries, Early Modern History, Jennet Device, Lancashire Witches, Pendle Witches, Phoebe Boswell, Simon Armitage, The Pendle Witch Child, Witchcraft
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
24 Saturday Jul 2010
Posted in Books, History, Non-Fiction, Witchcraft
≈ Comments Off on Wicked Enchantments
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Early Modern History, Joyce Froome, Lancashire, Museum of Witchcraft, Pendle Witches, Wicked Enchantments, Witchcraft
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
25 Monday Jan 2010
Posted in Books, Fiction, History, Witchcraft
Original artwork by John Gilbert
William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) was a historical novelist and one of the most popular English authors of the later 19th century. Born in Manchester, he trained as a lawyer and practised in London, but his true ambitions were always literary. In his youth, Ainsworth read adventure stories and was an admirer of Dick Turpin, the highwayman whose exploits were the subject of popular legend. The tale of Turpin’s overnight ride from London to York on his steed, Black Bess, featured in Ainsworth’s first novel, Rookwood (1834.)
Among Ainsworth’s nearly forty novels, several were set in his native Lancashire, including his most famous work, The Lancashire Witches: A Romance of Pendle Forest (1848.) Continue reading
