Which Witch Is The Worst Witch

In the supernatural world, spells, incantations, rituals and magic are commonplace, though in the rational world these things take some explaining. Shaun Cooper offers a few thoughts and examples on the folklore of witchcraft in Sussex

There are over 60 places in Sussex with definite reports of witches, with the range of witch legends from across the county being both broad and interesting. Generally, Sussex witch legends are typical of those found across Britain.

Many witches were reputed to be shape-changers and whimsical stories are commonplace. A witch from Duddleswell called Dame Garson could change into a hare when she wanted to spy on people. Although it might have been supposed that all witches could change their shape, only about a third of county witch legends feature that sort of thing.

Yarns concerning witches who could immobilise horses and wagons also proved popular. Witches who immobilised horses and wagons, or wagons-and-teams, were believed to have used their sorcery at Albourne, Hurstpierpoint, Laughton, Wigperry, Plumpton, Ditchling, West Grinstead, Crowborough, Horsted Keynes, and Hadlow Down, to name but just a few locations.

Belief in witchcraft lingered long in some of the more rural parts of Sussex, and so it has quite a few unusual witch legends – Old Martha, of Plumpton is a notable example. My favourite tale about Old Martha is the one Marcus Woodward recounts in The Mistress of Stanton’s Farm (1938) concerning the time she chased him down a hill, running backwards, and brandishing long knives. He also tells of an incident that occurred near East Chiltington. ‘A carter making a journey to Lewes on a dark night with a loaded wagon saw something spring up at the horse’s heads, by which they were thrown into a great fright, and how it turned into a hare which he struck with his whip, and how the hare then materialised into Old Martha.’

A very similar old tale was published in the Kent & Sussex Courier in 1932 about a Crowborough witch who leaped at the horses in the form of a black dog. An even earlier version

was recorded by Alice Catharine Day in 1927 in her book Glimpses of Rural Life in Sussex During the Last Hundred Years. This witch was named as Mrs. Weaver of Hadlow Down and the incident was said to have occurred near the Dudsland Paygate, on the modern day A267 between the villages of Cross-inHand and Five Ashes.

What’s interesting about these tales is that the witch had already shape-changed when she attacked the horses. Although Sussex also has other examples, this curious hybrid of the two most popular types of witch legends is very rare – especially in the shires.

Another unusual type of witch legend illustrates the uncanny laws prevailing during the death of a witch from old age. Nanny Smart became the notorious 18th century witch at Hurstpierpoint. Not only did she immobilise wagons-and-teams, but she also enjoyed bewitching civilians. It was reported, ‘She could not die unless someone bought the secrets of her life, and at last a man from Cuckfield bought them for a half-penny, and she died in a blue flame!’

Similarly, Witch Killick of Crowborough could not die, old though she was, until her witch-spirit ways had passed to somebody else, someone who was preferably one of her kin.

When her time was upon her, Witch Killick’s daughter would not come into the room, so the old hag couldn’t die. Eventually the nurse persuaded the young daughter to enter the room and thereupon the witch spirit passed into her, and mother was then able to die.

Reports of witch ghosts are rare, and one fable about the witch of Wigperry haunting Bedlam Pond, in Haywards Heath, is quite eldritch, or otherworldy. ‘It was said of this old pond that on a certain night at midnight an apparition in the shape of a haggard old woman might be seen seated on the surface busily plying a spinning wheel.’

A wood at Buxted was haunted by a ghost called the Witch of Tuck’s Wood. Nan Tuck being the name of a woman from Rotherfield who was once chased in there by an angry mob after the curious death of her husband. Nan Tuck mysteriously vanished and was never seen alive again, though her ghost haunted villagers. The road adjacent to the woods was named Nan Tuck’s Lane. The ghost of a witch at Pyecombe smithy was such a nuisance that it had to be exorcised.

A number of Sussex writers have noted that the fear of witchcraft lingered long in the county.

Dr. P. Habberton Lulham, writing in Sussex County Magazine in 1939, noted, ‘The belief in witchcraft is by no means dead yet, and in many Sussex villages I have been told that the witch’s malevolence is directed mainly against farm horses.’

And in Sussex Ways and Byways, (1969), Cecile Woodford writes, ‘Superstitions linger longer in Sussex than most other counties. Even today the belief in witchcraft and ill-wishing has not entirely faded out.’

Cecile Woodford also notes that over Crowborough way a supernatural ‘pack of hounds still pursue an old witch in the guise of a hare.’ This may be similar to the phenomenon known as The Witch Hounds, sometimes heard around Ditchling Beacon in the summer, and here described from a report in the Mid Sussex Times, in May 1933. ‘Suddenly the wind rose and the shepherd raised a hand in warning. Faintly at first, but growing in intensity, there came the sound of a hunt in full cry – the thud of hoof-beats, the short, excited yelping of the hounds, and the call of a hunting horn. The sounds grew louder and louder till they seemed to be just above us. Then they faded away.’

Be they folklore and legends handed down through the generations, or authenticated reports we should all pay heed to, witchcraft through the ages remains fascinating subject matter. l A Sussex Book of Witch Legends (2020) by Shaun Cooper is published by Country Books

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