GC3AYEF Witch 400 – Demdike - Malkin Tower, Saddlers Farm (Traditional Cache) in North West England, United Kingdom created by belbincolne

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belbincolne: Now live too far away to maintain so goodbye.

GC3AYEF ▼

A cache by belbincolne Message this owner

Hidden : 1/15/2012

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Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

Witch 400 – Elizabeth Southern (Demdike) of Malkin Tower - Saddlers Farm

2012 is the 400th anniversary of the execution of the Pendle Witches so I thought it appropriate to place a series of caches as close as possible to the places with which they are associated. You would need to be a very hard walker (and driver) to do them all in one trip! Many can be done as near drive-bys but you will need to study the footpaths on the South Pennines map OL21 very carefully.

The full facts are related over thousands of pages in a dozen books so you’ll appreciate that what appears here is incredibly abbreviated. Possibly witches were basically the herbal practioners, midwives and abortionists of their day who found it convenient to cast spells and claim results to enhance their reputation. We know little about most witches but the Pendle ones have become particularly famous because the clerk to the court wrote a book factually setting out the details of the case. A tiny bit of potted history is put in for each cache. On occasion it is not entirely reverent I’m afraid!

The witches (and their victims) all seem to have lived on farms most of which remain although in nothing like the form they were in 1612. Mostly they have changed out of all recognition and none have been kept as a tourist haven such as, say, the Bronte Parsonage. What little I know is recorded here.

By today’s standards the trial was a farce. Uncorroborated evidence from a child of 9 and a boy of weak intellect was accepted but the witches were their own worst enemy condemning themselves and the others with abandon so it is hardly surprising that they were found guilty in the climate of that particular time in history. For more details I can recommend the website (visit link)

Elizabeth was blind and about 80 in 1612. She died in prison whilst awaiting trial. She lived in the notorious witches covern of Malkin Tower – Malt Kiln House might be its modern name. No-one knows where this was located and there were some dozen places so named in the Pendle area at that time as with Lancashire’s wet climate grain would have rotted without proper storage.

There are two main contenders – Saddlers Farm is perhaps the most likely with Malkin Tower Farm another and the newly (re)discovered farm near Overhouses a most unlikely third. In all probability it was none of them! The date over the door of this one shows it wasn’t built until a century after her death but where on the site I’ll have to leave to proper historians. It’s most people’s favourite presumably because of its proximity to other known sites. On the earliest maps the area was called Malkin Fields and a ruin was found on them.

She had met her own devil – a boy called Tibb who wore a half black / half brown coat in a stone pit at Gouldshey (see Faughs Quarry) who demanded her soul in return for future help. A clever devil he was for he later re-appeared as a brown dog, a hare and a black cat. She doesn’t seem to have confessed to any particular misdeeds (although she was accused of killing a cow) but was responsible for the detailed instructions on how to cause injury by sticking pins into a clay doll – as seen on film and TV in every witch programme!

The farm is now the Shekinah Christian Centre. To get to Bull Hole go back down the road and then straight down from Well Head.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

haqre zbffl fgbar ol jnyy ba svryq fvqr

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)