The last few years I have been giving Talks via Zoom to promote book-borrowing from Settle library. Amongst my selections, I decided to choose recently published historical novels dealing with witchcraft in seventeenth century Lancashire and Essex.
These were The Familiars by Stacey Halls which featured Alice Gray, the woman who escaped being executed in Lancaster in 1612, and The Manningtree Witches majoring on the activities of “the witch finder” Matthew Hopkins who in 1644, sent 106 women to their deaths in Essex. I also wanted to mention the 1953 novel by Robert Neill, the now out-of-print Mist over Pendle for the author’s misuse of historical material, particularly of his characterisation of Alice Nutter as an out and out villain who deserved her fate. Did she?
As a result of the discussion, I organised on different occasions, three separate car loads of friends who were interested to have a drive along the Pendle witch trail to Roughlee, Alice Nutter’s village, where in 2012 to mark the 400th anniversary of her death, an impressive statue of her was created by sculptor James Starkie, who had been born in Roughlee.
I also added that I had known the area since the mid 1950s when I had taught English at Clitheroe Girls’ Grammar School. It had always intrigued me that Settle people would nearly always choose to go into the Dales or Lake District to enjoy a change of beautiful scenery, but never into the Pendle hill country.
The weather was good for all three outings. We drove down the A59 via Gisburn, to just over the Lancashire border to take the next right turn to Chatburn. In Chatburn village, we followed a left turn to Downham. The right side of the road was marked by a wall and trees hiding Downham Hall, residence of Lord Clitheroe, whose ancestors, the Asshetons, had had dealings with the Pendle witches.
Suddenly round a bend, there below us was the beautiful old village of Downham. We could see the road crossing over the beck and snaking up the steeply rising hill towards the looming menace of the Big End of Pendle Hill.
One person commented that she had never known that such stunning scenery lay so close to the Clitheroe Bypass. We stopped again, high up on the road, as we approached the bottom of the Big End. There in front, below and far away we could see Ingleborough, the River Ribble curving through ribbons and plots of wooded pastures towards the limestone hills of the Yorkshire Dales and Settle.
We enjoyed a good lunch at the 17th century Barley Mow Pub before driving a little further to take the left turn towards Roughlee down the pretty wooded valley drained by Pendle Water.
Now we began to notice place names that occur in the Pendle witch literature. The statue of Alice Nutter is well placed, beautifully executed and truly impressive. The craftsman had carved the statue in a costume Alice Nutter could have worn in 1612. In fact, we were deeply moved by what we saw and then read about her on the notice beside the statue.
She was unusual amongst those accused of witchcraft. She was the widow of a comparatively wealthy yeoman farmer. There was no evidence that she was a witch. The accusation was based on hearsay and nothing more. She pleaded not guilty but was still hanged with the other nine. We read on the notice, “Her poise and demeanour are open to your interpretation”. Other visitors must have felt as we did for on one visit, someone had placed a posy of flowers in the statue’s hands.
We drove back to Barley and then took a left turn at the T junction onto the narrow road of the Witch Trail. We followed the long way back to the A59, navigating the narrow twisty lanes high up on the east side of Pendle Hill with great views of the Calder valley below and the Bronte country beyond, past land marks like the Hoarstones and Newchurch in Pendle, mentioned in both The Familiars and Mist over Pendle, in the latter book, as places where devilish practices had occurred.
I also remember a very different experience, that of coming on this road in early August when the hilly slopes were covered with a breath-taking carpet of hazy purple heather. It was hard to recall that this place was once known as Pendle Forest, the hunting ground of local nobility, like the De Laceys of Clitheroe Castle, then left virtually unattended after their day, a wild, lawless and dangerous place, not one to traverse alone.
We followed the signs for Sabden. As we approached the Nick of Pendle above Sabden, I waited for exclamations of pleasure as the views on the other side were suddenly exposed. In front, loomed the ruined bulk of Clitheroe Castle; to the left, Kemple End, Longridge Fell, the hills of the Hodder Valley, and further left, the widening River Ribble winding slowly towards its end in the Irish Sea. We joined the A59 again at the bottom of the hill and returned home after a memorable and enjoyable visit to a beautiful and haunting area, so near home, but which most of us had never visited before.
