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| Pendle Hill |
The borough of Pendle has been considered haunted ever since the 1612 trials that sent ten people to the gallows. Here’s a deeper look at the history, the landscape, the enduring legends, and how curious visitors can still walk the ground where fear, poverty, family rivalry, and royal superstition collided.
According to local legend, visitors to Pendle Hill are supposed to feel inexplicable anger, panic, or dread. Climbing the 557-metre (1,827-foot) muddy escarpment in east Lancashire, what many first feel is exhaustion and the wet. The summit is frequently wrapped in thick mist.
Surrounded by that cloud, with the wind cutting across the open moor and the villages below swallowed from view, it is hard to deny a sense of unease. This is the landscape where twelve people from the Pendle area were accused of witchcraft in 1612, leading to one of England’s best-documented and deadliest witch trials.
Ten were executed. Ever since, the hill, its surrounding villages, and the ancient Forest of Pendle have carried a reputation for the uncanny.
Warning: This article contains details of historical violence and persecution that some readers may find upsetting.
“There are rumours of ghostly and phantom monks, while people have reportedly experienced breathing difficulties there,” says Stephen Oldfield, a Lancashire historian and author. Tour guide Stephen Entwhistle notes the local claim that the last patch of snow melting on Pendle Hill takes the shape of a witch.
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| Visitors to the area can trace the accused imagine footsteps |
Such tales, amplified since the 400th anniversary commemorations in 2012, draw walkers, dark tourists, and ghost-hunters, especially around Halloween. They come for the story and stay for some of the most underrated hill country in northern England—dramatic green slopes, heather, pastures, and long views toward Yorkshire on a clear day.
England’s darkest local witch trials: Context and causes
In early 17th-century England, causing death by witchcraft was already a capital offence. King James I, deeply superstitious and the author of Daemonologie (1597), raised the stakes with the Witchcraft Act of 1604. It made even non-fatal acts—conjuring spirits, casting spells, or consulting with “evil and wicked spirits”—punishable by death.
The elderly, the poor, and “cunning folk” who offered healing charms or fortune-telling were especially vulnerable. Lancashire, a region still marked by residual Catholicism, economic hardship, and suspicion of outsiders or those living on the margins, proved fertile ground.
“This was a time of great turmoil,” Oldfield notes. “People were very, very suspicious of anybody who didn’t live what they considered to be a normal life.” Two rival families of poor folk healers and beggars dominated the local accusations: the Devices, headed by the elderly Elizabeth Southerns (known as Old Demdike), and the Whittles, headed by Anne Whittle (Old Chattox).
Both families lived by begging and selling small charms and cures. Inter-family grudges, unpaid debts, and competition for clients provided ready material for escalation once official attention fell on them.
The spark came in March 1612. Alizon Device, granddaughter of Old Demdike, encountered the pedlar John Law near Colne or Nelson and asked for pins. When he refused, she allegedly cursed him. Law soon collapsed—modern accounts recognise the symptoms of a stroke—and his son reported the matter to local magistrate Roger Nowell of Read Hall.
Under questioning, Alizon confessed to having sent a familiar spirit (in the form of a dog) to harm Law. She implicated her grandmother and the rival Chattox family. Old Demdike, Old Chattox, Alizon, and Anne Redferne (Chattox’s daughter) were sent to Lancaster Castle.
A Good Friday gathering on 10 April 1612 at the Device family home, Malkin Tower (exact location uncertain, somewhere in Pendle Forest), was interpreted by Nowell as a witches’ sabbath. Attendees included relatives and neighbours who had come to discuss the arrests; the prosecution later claimed a plot to free the prisoners by blowing up the castle and further acts of maleficium (harmful magic).
More arrests followed, including Elizabeth Device (Alizon’s mother), James Device (her brother), Alice Nutter of Roughlee (a relatively wealthier yeoman’s widow who stood out among the mostly destitute accused), Katherine Hewitt, Jane and John Bulcock, and others. The prisoners were held overnight at Ashlar House in Fence before being marched through the Forest of Bowland to the dank cells of Lancaster Castle’s Well Tower. Old Demdike, in her eighties, died in prison before trial.
Nine-year-old Jennet Device became the crucial prosecution witness. Her testimony against her own mother, brother, sister, grandmother’s associates, and others proved devastatingly effective in the eyes of the court. The main trials took place at the Lancaster Assizes on 18–19 August 1612 before judges Sir Edward Bromley and Sir James Altham. The primary surviving account is The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster(1613) by Thomas Potts, the court clerk, written at the judges’ direction. It is detailed but partisan—designed to justify the proceedings and align with royal policy rather than serve as a neutral transcript.
Confessions were extracted under the pressure of imprisonment and interrogation, not formal judicial torture (which was rare in English common-law practice at the time). The accused faced charges of murdering ten people by witchcraft and various lesser offences.
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| Despite its dark past, the surrounding pendle hill is one of Englands most scenic |
Nine of the Pendle accused were found guilty and hanged on Gallows Hill near Lancaster on 20 August 1612: Anne Whittle (Old Chattox), Anne Redferne, Elizabeth Device, Alizon Device, James Device, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Jane Bulcock, and John Bulcock. Alice Grey was acquitted. Jennet Preston, linked to the Malkin Tower gathering but living in Yorkshire, had already been tried and hanged at York. The scale was significant: English witch executions across centuries totalled fewer than 500; this cluster accounted for a notable share in one place and time.
Witch-hunting continued in England for decades but gradually declined with the rise of more sceptical Enlightenment attitudes. The 1736 Witchcraft Act effectively decriminalised the practice by treating claims of supernatural powers as fraud.
Historians emphasise multiple overlapping causes: genuine belief in magic shared by accused and accusers; economic desperation and social marginalisation; family and neighbourly feuds that found expression in supernatural language; residual religious tensions in a region with strong Catholic traditions; and an ambitious local magistrate operating in a climate shaped by the king’s well-known interest in witches. Alice Nutter’s inclusion remains particularly intriguing—she was of higher status and maintained her innocence—suggesting possible score-settling or property motives alongside genuine panic.
A ‘spooky presence’ that refuses to fade
The Pendle trials remain among the most famous and best-recorded in English history, thanks largely to Potts’s pamphlet. The landscape has never fully shaken the association. Oldfield observes that Pendle Hill’s damp, bleak character naturally feeds stories of hauntings: “There’s always been this atmosphere and spooky presence in Pendle Hill. It’s like being in another country, even compared to West Lancashire.”
Author Stacey Halls, whose novel The Familiars is set against the backdrop of the trials, finds the hill unnerving on cloudy days: “When you’re up there on a cloudy day, which it always is up there, you literally cannot see. It’s like being in a cloud… It’s a bit unnatural, a bit spooky.” Local wells still bear carved protection marks.
Television programmes such as Most Haunted and independent paranormal groups regularly investigate sites linked to the Nutters or the wider area. Reports range from apparitions and disembodied voices to sudden cold spots, a sense of being followed, and the occasional spectral black dog—echoing the familiars described in the 1612 testimony.
For the 400th anniversary, organisations created the Pendle Witches’ Way and the longer Lancashire Witches’ Walk (roughly 51 miles from the Pendle area to Lancaster), marked in places with cast-iron waymarkers featuring verses by then-Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. These routes follow imagined paths the accused may have taken toward imprisonment and death. The hill itself was not a ritual site in the trial records, yet its dramatic presence has made it the enduring symbol.
Modern interest mixes genuine historical curiosity, dark tourism, and commercial folklore. Crystal shops, witch-themed cafés, and souvenir outlets sit alongside serious heritage interpretation. Some advocacy continues for formal recognition or posthumous pardons of the victims, framing them as casualties of injustice rather than practitioners of harmful magic.
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| Local carve anti-witch marks into buildings to protect themselves from spells |
Walking alongside the accused: A practical journey through the landscape
A visit rewards both the history-minded and those seeking open country. Start in Newchurch-in-Pendle, a tiny hillside village of fewer than a thousand residents that still feels continuous with the early 17th century.
Homes display witch motifs, horseshoes for protection, and holly. St Mary’s Church holds the so-called “Witches’ Tomb” (a stone vault bearing the common local name Nutter and skull carvings) and the distinctive “Eye of God” carving on the tower, popularly interpreted as a later protective emblem against evil. Historians caution that a convicted witch would not have been buried in consecrated ground, and the Nutter name was widespread; the association is traditional rather than proven. The churchyard itself, with its weathered stones, nonetheless carries atmosphere.
From Newchurch, continue to Barley, the main base for climbing Pendle Hill. The standard circular routes from the village car park offer moderate challenges with steep stepped sections, muddy paths after rain, and superb views. Sturdy boots, waterproofs, and awareness of rapidly changing weather are essential—phone signal can be unreliable. Alternative starts exist from the Nick o’ Pendle or other points. The Pendle Sculpture Trail in nearby Aitken Wood adds contemporary art installations to a gentler option.
Roughlee features a life-size metal sculpture of Alice Nutter. Ashlar House in Fence is one of the few buildings still standing that the accused are known to have entered. Driving or walking sections of the Forest of Bowland route conveys the isolation the prisoners would have felt on their forced march.
Lancaster itself provides the sombre endpoint: the medieval castle’s dungeons (visitable on guided tours) are damp and oppressive. Local tradition links The Golden Lion pub to a final drink before execution, and many pubs in the wider area lean into haunted reputations.
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| Ashlar House is believed to be where the accused were held |
Practical notes for visitors
• Getting there: Drive to the Pendle Hill lay-by on Barley Lane or park in Barley village. The Witch Way (X43) express bus links Manchester with Burnley and nearby points. Nearest useful rail is Clitheroe, then taxi or bus onward.
• When to go: Year-round; autumn’s shorter days, mist, and damp heighten the atmosphere, though paths can be slippery. Summer offers longer light and clearer summit views.
• Where to stay and eat: The Pendle Inn in Barley sits at the heart of the walking country. Other options exist in the surrounding villages and Lancaster.
• What to do: Pendle Heritage Centre in Barrowford offers solid historical interpretation and an 18th-century garden. Witches Galore in Newchurch stocks memorabilia and local history books. Combine hill walks with the longer marked trails if time allows. Lancaster Castle provides the judicial endpoint.
• Respect the place: This is working countryside with livestock. Stick to paths, close gates, and treat the history with more than Halloween novelty. The victims were real people—mostly poor, uneducated, and caught in a perfect storm of belief, rivalry, and authority.
Entwhistle observes that the story has the makings of high drama: deception, lies, superstition, religion, and family betrayal.
Oldfield remains more sombre: “These were just uneducated, poor and pitiful people, who didn’t have a hope in life. Healing gave them a sense of importance. Nowadays, you’d just avoid them. But because of the atmosphere of the time, they were killed.”
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| Lancaster Castle is where 10 of the accused meet their death |
Pendle Hill does not need theatrical ghosts to unsettle. The documented history—of a child testifying against her family, of neighbours turning on neighbours, of a legal system that accepted spectral evidence and confessions extracted under duress—supplies enough darkness.
Walking the slopes, standing in the churchyard, or descending into the castle cells connects the visitor to a specific tragedy that illuminates broader truths about fear, power, and the human capacity to turn the unfamiliar into the diabolical. The mist still rolls in. The presence, whether supernatural or simply historical, endures.
Samuel O. Sulaimon is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Naijapiz. He covers Global, News, Sports, Finance, Faiths, Education, Politics and Technology.
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