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
old woman might be seen seated on the Killick’s daughter would not come into surface busily plying a spinning wheel.’ the room, so the old hag couldn’t die. A wood at Buxted was haunted Eventually the nurse persuaded the by a ghost called the Witch of Tuck’s young daughter to enter the room and Wood. Nan Tuck being the name of thereupon the witch spirit passed into a woman from Rotherfield who was her, and mother was then able to die. once chased in there by an angry mob Reports of witch ghosts are rare, after the curious death of her husband. and one fable about Nan Tuck mysteriously the witch of vanished and was never Wigperry Nan Tuck seen alive again, though haunting mysteriously her ghost haunted Bedlam Pond, villagers. The road in Haywards vanished and adjacent to the woods was Heath, is quite was never seen named Nan Tuck’s Lane. eldritch, or alive again The ghost of a witch otherworldy. at Pyecombe smithy ‘It was said was such a nuisance that it had to be of this old pond exorcised. that on a certain A number of Sussex writers have night at midnight noted that the fear of witchcraft an apparition in the lingered long in the county. shape of a haggard
100 SUSSEX LIVING | May 2021
AP21
