Pendle

it's a beautiful day yeah as we speak we're in july it's coming to the end of july and we're we're in this sort of little mini heat wave again we find ourselves in a little bit of shade and we are about to climb what looks like some new work which presumably mark you and your team have created tell us more

yes where are we well we're actually in cone which is in East Lancashire and we're all part of the Burnley and Pendle Ramblers path maintenance team.

We work under the auspices of Pendle Borough Council under their countryside access officer called Tom and we meet every Wednesday.

There's a total of five of us.

We all can't do every week so we rotate or when we're available when we're not on holiday And essentially what we do, we go out every Wednesday, we fix things, we repair things, we mate things, all trying to make the countryside more accessible, make it easier.

So, for example, when you've walked along a path and you've come to a stile and the stile's been wobbly or broken, and you've reported it to your local highway authority in Pendle on a Wednesday, we'll go out and we'll fix it.

Myself, Mark, Colin, Adam and Simon.

And we have a couple of other folks as well that occasionally do it.

Thank you.

Welcome to the Paranormal Pendle podcast, coming to you from the heart of Pendle witch country in the northwest of England.

My name is Craig Bryant, author, investigator and collector of stories.

Join me as we take a journey into the paranormal, UFO sightings, cryptozoology and big cats.

This is the Paranormal Pendle podcast.

Welcome everyone to episode 96 of Paranormal Pendle.

So I'm delighted that my guest on this episode is Inspector Roy Teague.

Roy, thanks for joining me.

Welcome to the Proper British History Podcast.

Today, we untangle the real story behind the Pendle Witch Trials, separating fact from legend.

Pendle Hill sits almost like a sentry over the rolling moorland of Lancashire, its summit shrouded in mist and myth.

No one there was born with any great lineage, only families working the land and keeping their own traditions.

In sixteen twelve, these families, especially the Device and Chattox lines, each headed by an elderly matriarch named Elizabeth or Anne, found themselves at the center of accusations that would soon turn from local gossip into legal death sentences.

James' policy, recorded in the early part of his reign, was to enforce stricter interpretation of the sixteen oh four Act of Witches.

Anyone accused could be tried and, if found guilty, condemned, often by hanging at Lancaster Castle.

When the Pendle families were brought before a local jury in August sixteen twelve, Thomas Potts, who served as clerk to the court, recorded every detail, including testimonies from twelve accusers, three boys and nine women, all of whom claimed personal harm or curses.

Described by somebody at the time as a dark corner of the land, it had a reputation for disobedience, full of troublemakers and subversives.

And this area, not far from where I live, dominated by the strange brooding presence of Pendle Hill, was almost beyond the back of beyond.

Today, it's established an odd niche by trading on its dark past.

In 1612, the nine-year-old Janet Devis lived in obscurity at her grandmother's house, Malkin Tower.

Alison's statement escalated the investigation.

Chattox and her daughter were very ready to point the finger back at the Devis family and accused Granny Demdike of witchcraft, too.

Nowell realized that he was no longer investigating a single incident, but was now heading up a major witch hunt, rooting the evil out of Pendle.

On April the 2nd, Nowell made his first arrests.

With laughter and cheer and the odd cheeky beer, they found it's the fun that they seek.

hello and welcome to a very special episode of slinky by tuesday i'm lucy trinder now regular listeners will know that katie and i have always been fascinated by true crime history mysteries and the stories of the people behind them so today's guest is right up our street carol ann lee is an acclaimed author and historian whose books have explored some of the most fascinating and at times darkest stories from our past her work ranges from anne frank and the holocaust to some of britain's most notorious crimes including the moore's murders More recently, Carol has turned her attention to a very different chapter of British history, the Pendle Witches trial in her book, Something Wicked, The Lives, Crimes and Deaths of the Pendle Witches.

And that's particularly exciting for us because Carol will be joining us in person on Sunday, the 18th of October at the Bonnington Theatre in Arnold for our matinee of murders and mysteries, where we'll be delving into the real women, accusations and events behind one of the most infamous witch trials in English history.

But before that, Katie managed to catch up with Carol for a chat about her writing, her research, the stories that stay with her and of course, all things mysterious and macabre.

Book your tickets now at trinderandtrinder.co.uk.

So today I am absolutely delighted to be joined by Sunday Times bestselling author Carol Ann Lee.

Now her latest book, Something Wicked, takes a fresh look at one of Britain's most infamous historical events, the Pendle Witch Trials.

Carol's going to be joining us for Matinees of Murders and Mysteries this October and we will be going even deeper into the myths, the truths, the life's and the people caught up in one of history's greatest miscarriages of justice.

Indeed, parts of those yet to be mentioned may be among the most beautiful of all, for the Pennines do not define the whole of its eastern limits.

After running past Bowlesworth, familiar to readers of Halliwell Sutcliffe's stories, and sweeping round the forests of Trawden and Bendle, immortalised by Harrison Ainsworth in the Lancashire Witches, and actually cutting across the foothills of Pendle himself, the boundary winds westwards along the pretty Ings Beck, almost from its source to its junction with the Ribble, just beyond Smithy's Bridge.

From this point, for perhaps something like twenty miles, Lancashire shares with Yorkshire two of the most beautiful rivers in England.

From the point we have just mentioned, we follow the Ribble to the Watersmeet, where the Hodder joins it on the opposite side, and then trace the Hodder upwards to beyond Whitewell.

Ramsbottom, Helmshore, and Haslingden lie at the foot of the noble moors that rise steeply on both sides of them.

The same is true of Turton, Edgworth, and Darwen.

Bury has the winding, well-watered gorge of Deepdale close at hand, and above it the steep slopes of Knowl Hill and the surrounding heights, while Burnley, Nelson, and Colne cluster round the huge mass of Pendle, of which it has been well said by Mr. F.H. Cheetham in his admirable little guide that more perhaps than any other physical feature of the county, Pendle Hill typifies Lancashire to Lancashire men.

We have spoken of the hardy race whose grit and ingenuity first combined industrial occupations with agriculture, and then, as the former developed and received the enormous impetus due to the revolution, changed an area that they had themselves made largely agricultural into one that was mainly industrial.