"Roughting Linn is one of those places where the problems of history and historicism feel like a thankfully absent footnote. You can look at the cup and ring marks carved in the rocks before the written word and bar the modernity of the clothes you bring with you, it could be anytime, timeless. The domed outcrop sits nestled in a grove of birch trees, some young, some old now, dancing in slow motion to a downward crescendo in step lead by the bracket fungi that call them home. Further on but close by there is a beautiful waterfall surrounded by moss drenched rocks. I once saw the sun break from a bank of clouds and cast a rainbow over the waterfall that was so bright my eyes were singing."

– Ben Jeans Houghton, Newcastle

Oriel Davies Gallery is the first venue on the Waking the Witch tour.

Oriel Davies Gallery is a key public art gallery of Wales, based in Newtown, rural Powys presenting world-class, thought-provoking and challenging art by national and international artists in an environment that is welcoming, engaging, informative and free. The Gallery and exhibition spaces are family-friendly, physically accessible and ideal for experiencing contemporary art.

With great reliance placed on the power of the wise man or the wise woman, witchcraft in Wales had long been connected to healing. For most of the Middle Ages the word witch really meant the local healer, someone who made poultices and medicines and perhaps had charms or spells for healing cattle and other farm animals. This seems to have rung especially true in Wales, where there were relatively few witch trials. Only five Welsh witches were executed for their supposed crimes during the “witch craze” in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Park
Newtown
Powys
SY16 2NZ

20-21 Visual Arts Centre will host the culmination of the tour from 18 January - 18 April 2020.

Based in a converted and deconsecrated church, 20-21 Visual Arts Centre has over the past fifteen years developed a great track record for offering a varied and exciting exhibition programme of contemporary art. They show around 20 exhibitions per year, across six exhibition spaces, and aim to be as ambitious and creatively diverse with their shows as possible. As well as bringing arts and culture to the local community, 20-21 Visual Arts Centre aims to show art by groups that are underrepresented in mainstream galleries and the art world.

Church Square
Scunthorpe
DN15 6TA

Visit website

Sidney Cooper Gallery is the second venue on the Waking the Witch tour and is located in the historic city centre of Canterbury. Just up the high street from the gallery is a reconstruction of a historic ‘dunking chair’ suspended over the Stour River. These chairs were used to “test out” if women were witches or not by submerging them in water and seeing if they would float.

Sidney Cooper Gallery was founded over 150 years ago as a place to experience, discuss and create art. For more information about our programme of exhibitions, workshops and events, visit the link below.

22-23 St Peter's St 
Canterbury 
CT1 2BQ

Visit website

Waking the Witch will tour to Bonington Gallery in Nottingham Autumn 2019.

Bonington Gallery is an exhibition space and curatorial entity situated within the Bonington building at Nottingham Trent University. The gallery delivers a programme of exhibitions, initiatives and events that aim to solidify its position within the city as a leading exponent of innovative exhibition practice.

Nottingham Trent University
School of Art & Design
Bonington building
Dryden Street
Nottingham
NG1 4GG

"My Grandparents lived 9 years of their lives at sea on a small yacht, not a showy thing but a working boat. On their travels they stopped at an island and my grandmother swapped a box of Catherine Cookson novels for a bag of rose quartz with a prince. They stopped in New Zealand where my mother was born, built two houses there and later settled in Kent, at Margate, by the sea. As a boy I would visit them and go walking along the beaches, flanked by huge chalk cliffs riddled with smugglers caves that I relished exploring. One day they took us to the shell grotto that was Discovered in 1853 by a boy digging a duck pond. The origins of this maze of underground tunnels and chambers covered in 4.6 million shells remains a total mystery. The feeling inside was damp and calm and electric. I could feel that much had happened there and that magic had been made. I felt then that the grotto, in truth a temple and albeit a material place, was etched into the immaterial world, deliberately built in both worlds at once and is still used in that way remotely, to meet and make and learn."

– Ben Jeans Houghton, Newcastle

"We went to a summer solstice rave on the beach just past Bamburgh Castle. We parked up near the golf club and walked along the cliff edge with the sea on our right and made our way down to the dunes. There were mushrooms growing out of the sand which was something I'd never seen before. By the time it was pitch black it was low tide, the sand stretches out for a huge distance there. We all decided to go and have a swim together and on our approach to the sea's edge our footprints set off glittering blinks of blue light in the sand. It was staggering, like little universes coming into being then fading away in our footsteps. As we got to the sea's edge the lapping waves were glowing like blue flames. As we started swimming plumes and ripples of phosphorescent light billowed out behind our movements. The presence of these lights in the dark made the ineffable all-living reality of life palpable. Everyone went as silent as when a great meal is shared between hungry friends. All you could hear were gentle gasps, exhales or release and the lapping water as it lit the limits of our bodies, communicating our shapes in the night seas depths."

– Ben Jeans Houghton, Newcastle

"I visited the Giant's Causeway sometime before I was five years old. I have no clear memories of it but the hexagonal basalt columns impressed themselves upon me to the point that variants of them have featured prominently in the landscape of my dreams and recurring dreams ever since. I was once part of a dream workshop with a Finish Shaman at one of the Uk dream Conferences in Durham. She asked if anyone had a dream they were happy to share. I offered a dream where I woke up in a tent on a beach flanked by cliffs made of these basalt columns. After listening to the dream in full the Shaman assigned roles to the other participants and arranged them around the room. An old man was to be the cliffs, two women made an arch and became the tent, others populated other aspects of the landscape and the characters I met. Then one of the women participating was given the role of me and invited to wake up in the tent and re-experience the dream. I watched in silence as she wandered around the symbolic landscape of my dream in an unfolding dialogue with the Shaman, sharing her insights and recanting new pieces of information. The experience moved me greatly. I still visit huge coves and rock pool beaches a lot in my dreaming. I have been to sea temples and altars, places so full of elemental spirits that being human there becomes such a tiny experience."

– Ben Jeans Houghton, Newcastle

I was first alerted to the existence of Chanctonbury Ring - which is a ring of trees very high up on the Sussex South Downs - by Doreen Valiente who, in her book an ABC of witchcraft describes it as a 'time-honoured meeting place of the Sussex witches'. Doreen lived for most of her life in Brighton, and would often go visiting this extraordinary site, which is also mentioned in her first book 'Where Witchcraft Lives' (1962). More recently, whilst writing the biography of Monica Sjoo, I came across a letter describing a performance by artists Jill Bruce and Bruce Lacey that was held up there. This, as it turned out it, was one of the last - if not the last - public performance they completed together, because they split up and separated shortly after.

Rupert White

Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern Wicca, claimed he joined a New Forest coven in 1940 to perform ’Operation Cone of Power’, a rite against the threat of Hitler’s invading forces. Various accounts of the event have been put forward, disputed as many times as they have been told. Some say the coven covered themselves in bear fat to ward off the cold and others that some of the members were so energetically drained they later died from the ritual. Regardless of its accuracy it is nevertheless a powerful image of a group of people summoning their collective energy to ward off an immensely negative force, an act which resonants today with the current hexes being made against American political figures such as Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh.

Una Hamilton Helle, Legion Projects

1660: Joan Perry, hung for robbing William Harrison who disappeared while collecting rents. Joan’s son, John, was initially accused of murdering Harrison, and he placed the blame on his mother and brother. In the absence of a body all three were hung for robbery although no rent monies were found. Joan died first as “the Mother (being reputed a Witch, and to have so bewitched her Sons, they could confess nothing while she lived).” Joan’s words, if any, are not recorded in magistrate Sir Thomas Overbury’s account, her sons died protesting their innocence. John’s body was left hanging while Joan and Richard were buried underneath the gallows.

A story is later told of a local woman with an interest in witchcraft who paid for Joan’s body to be exhumed three days later. On seeing the body the woman’s horse shied tossing her into the newly opened grave.

Harrison turned up two years later with a tale of kidnap, piracy and slavery. After his re-appearance the remains of John’s body were taken down from the gallows and buried. Shortly afterwards Harrison’s wife was found dead having hung herself.

Emma Defries

In a conversation with local witch historian Andrew Pickering, I discovered that the woman named Julian Cox, whose story had inspired my paper cut and ceremonial candle wax piece ‘Hare Woman‘, was actually rumoured to haunt Nunny Castle in Somerset. With this knowledge, it seemed inevitable that my next project would be a ghost hunt!

On a bitterly cold, but bright November afternoon, I drove to Nunny Castle accompanied by two young women, who had agreed to be my models for the project now called ‘Witch Ghost Hunt‘. On arriving at Nunny car park, we unloaded the ceremonial clothing, candles, sage and other witchcraft ritual items (and very warm coats) which we had packed into the boot of the car at the start of our journey.

On approaching, the Castle was bathed in the beautiful, golden light of the winter sun and was breathtaking. I had decided that rather than trying to contact the ghost of Julian Cox, I would ask the models to perform a “Cleansing” ritual. In witchcraft and shamanic traditions, this ritual releases spirits who are trapped in a particular place.

In addition to performing the Cleansing ritual, I asked the models to dress in clothes that may represent the witch spirits that might be found at Nunny Castle.

The real magic happened, as the glowing sun gave way to the evening darkness, and the last of the visitors left the Castle. There were a couple of unsettling moments as the models performed the ritual. Although, in separate towers of the castle, both young women heard a hiss close to their ear while cleansing the towers with the smoke of burning White Sage. One model remarked, “I think we have pissed off the witch ghost!“. The atmosphere was both eerie and mystical at the same time.

Witnessing, the two young women move around the Castle interior, performing the Cleansing ritual, I wondered about Julian Cox; the women who supposedly had been born in Nunney and was accused of and put to death for witchcraft. I felt a sadness for what she had been made to endure, along with many other innocent women and men, put to death during the European witch hunt hysteria.

Luminara Star

On the hillside overlooking the intersection of the Rivers Ouse, Trent and Humber, Julian's Bower is a Turf Cut Labyrinth with an earthwork known as Countess Close above it. Credited to St Julian the Hospitaller, or a cell of monks who lived in the area until the 13th century; it has played an important part in the lives of the locals, and games are known to have been played here on May Eve until well into the 19th century and still attracts people during the festivals on the wheel of the year.

Sean Palfrey

Once the second wealthiest preceptory belonging to the order of the Knights Templar, this tower is all that remains and is one of the few Templar sites still standing. The interior of the tower is full of masons marks and symbols carved into the stone; including apotropaic symbols such as daisy wheels, pentangles, triquetras, interlocking 'V's and 'M's. The Templars on this site  were arrested when teh order was forcefully disolved and taken to Lincoln Castle, amidst accusations of devil worship, infanticide and other heresies.

Sean Palfrey

The infamous Lincoln Imp is a grotesque carved into the wall of the cathedral and has become the symbol of the city. The Legend goes that Satan sent two imps to terrorise the north of England, when they reached Lincoln Cathedral the began to run amok and destroy things within the building. An angel emerged from a book of Hymns to stop them, and as one cowered under the destroyed tables the other threw rocks at the angel who subsequently turned it to stone. The imp that hid is said to still circle the Cathedral looking for its friend causing what is known as The Devil's Wind.

Sean Palfrey

The Werewolf of Dogdyke is a story recorded in 1926 about an archaeologist in the early 19th century who uncovered the remains of a creature with a human body but a wolf's head. He brought them back to his home and in the night was awoken by the sight of the creature, reanimated at his bedroom window. It smashed the window and chased him into the kitchen, which he barred himself into. Come the morning the sounds of the creature had ceased and he unbarred the kitchen door to find the remains strewn about the floor. He quickly gathered them up and reburied them and was tormented no more.

Sean Palfrey

In the 17th Century, a mother and her two daughters were accused of Witchcraft by the family of the 6th Earl of Rutland whose heirs had both died. Joan, Margaret and Philippa Flowers were local healers who accepted employment at Belvoir castle. They were dismissed by the Earl and the Countess after accusations of theft from the other staff, after which the noble family fell ill resulting in the deaths of two of their children. An accusation of witchcraft was made several years later and the Fowlers were imprisoned in Lincoln Castle for trial. Joan Fowler protested her innocence and asked for bread blessed for the Eucharist which a witch would not be able to eat. She choked on the first bite and died. The remaining fowlers confessed and implicated three others. Margaret Fowler was subsequently hung though it is said Phillipa escaped to Kent after drugging a guard.

Sean Palfrey

Under the waves of Cardigan Bay lies the lost kingdom of Cantre'r Gwaelod; Britain's own Atlantis. Said to have been sunk in a deluge, all that remains are the petrified tree stumps on beaches such as those at Borth, near Aberystwyth. There are many versions of the myth, with the earliest being in the Black Book of Camarthen Housed in the National Library in Aberystwyth. The bleak hinterland of Wales is an ancient and melancholic place haunted by legends and mythology with the tale of the sunken kingdom featuring heavily. The church bells of Cantre'r Gwaelod are still said to ring out in times of danger.

Sean Palfrey

In the 11th Century the Devil visited Wales and attempted to gain the soul of one witty old lady. The lady owned a cow that was stranded across a river and in exchange for building a bridge the devil would claim the first soul that crossed it. But when the bridge was built the old lady threw a loaf of bread across which was chased by a dog, thus outwitting the devil who was so embarrassed he never returned to Wales.

Sean Palfrey

A young farmer named Gwyn fell in love with the lady of the lake who agreed to marry him but warned him that if he struck her three times she would return to the lake. They were married and raised a family but after playfully striking her for a third time she disappeared back into the lake. She only reappeared from the lake to teach her children the powers of healing with herbs. Some of their ancient remedies have survived and are in the Red Book of Hergest, one of Wales' most important medieval manuscripts.

Sean Palfrey

Reputedly the last resting place of the Holy Grail brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea who, according to Medieval chroniclers founded a line of guardians to keep it safe. It ended up in Nanteos Mansion attracting visitors who drank from it, believing it had healing powers. The mansion itself is also reputedly haunted and the site of other paranormal activity to this day.

Sean Palfrey

Merlin's Oak is the remains of an ancient tree said to have been planted by the wizard who then placed a protective curse on it stating that Carmarthen would “drown” if the oak was ever removed. Despite being poisoned in the 19th Century by and angry local, the tree endured until it was removed after being set on fire in the 1970s, after which the town was subject to some of the worst flooding in it's history.

Sean Palfrey

The legendary last resting place of the wizard Merlin is said to be on this beautiful island. Here he was laid to rest in a glass coffin surrounded by the 13 treasures of Britain and 9 Bardic companions.

Sean Palfrey

An ancient quarry identified as the main source for the spotted dolerite bluestones used at Stonehenge 180 miles away. The surrounding mountainous landscape features isolated cairns and other prehistoric sites where natural healing herbs and plants still grow.

Sean Palfrey

The Hawkstone is a megalithic Menhir or Standing Stone in Oxfordshire, UK. It was used during the witch-hunting years to hang and torture witches by hanging them from the top ridge, before torturing, and/or burning them until they were dead. The distinctive cleft and circular hole at the top of the stone is said to have been caused by the chains used to secure the accused women. The stone is situated in a field left to pasture, set back from a single track lane. There is very little passing traffic, and visitors tend to be either Standing Stone enthusiasts or witchcraft pilgrims, like myself. I visited the site last on Father’s Day 2018 and had a vision as I approached the Stone. The field became still and silent; the birds stopped singing, and the blustering wind stopped dead. I saw the stone in a field of cut wheat - the harvest of John Barleycorn. I made this print in response to that vision. Since 2017 I have undertaken past life regression therapy; I was once a woman named Josephine. Josephine is a herbal witch who was hanged for aiding women who were victims of sexual abuse and attack, to terminate their pregnancies. Josephine first came to me in this life when I was 17, through an awakening experience when I too became pregnant through sexual misdemeanour. I shut down my awakening by losing myself in drugs and alcohol, and in time had blocked the experience out entirely. Seventeen years later, in 2017 at age 34 Josephine came to me again after the death of my father. My father died on 22nd September, the first day of autumn; the day John Barleycorn is sacrificed or harvested to allow us to live on in the wealth of the crop he grew and nourished. After my experience at The Hawk Stone I got walked back to my car with words spoken by Josephine in my head ‘You are John Barleycorn’s daughter. You are John Barleycorn’s daughter. You are John Barleycorn’s daughter. I am John Barleycorn’s Daughter!’.

St James Old Church ruin at Bix, Oxfordshire; ​Filming location of ​The Witches​, the 1966 Hammer Horror classic British film. In the film the church ruin is used as the site for witchcraft rituals (or the religion practiced by the villagers).

The church ruin at ​Bix Bottom ​is also the filming location of the final climactic ritual ceremony scene in the 1971 classic ​Blood on Satan’s Claw.

Ox Art, Annabel Pettigrew & Rob MacPherson, Frome oxart-uk.com

Hambleden Village ​in Buckinghamshire is also used as the main, and most distinctive filming location in​The Witches.​ T​ he village has remained unchanged for many years, walking around it feels quite literally like walking through the film’s scenery:

Ox Art, Annabel Pettigrew & Rob MacPherson, Frome oxart-uk.com

Dashwood Mausoleum, ​Buckinghamshire – Filming location from the 1976 film adaptation of Dennis Wheatley’s ​To The Devil A Daughter. ​The Mausoleum features as the setting for the final scene where the character of Catherine is due to be ritually sacrificed to The Devil in the centre of a magic circle cast in blood:

Ox Art, Annabel Pettigrew & Rob MacPherson, Frome oxart-uk.com

Lavenham in Suffolk​, The location of one of the last places in England where witches were burned and the filming location of The Witchfinder General.

Ox Art, Annabel Pettigrew & Rob MacPherson, Frome oxart-uk.com