The Scrapfaggot Witch Stone of Great Leighs, Essex.

Great Leighs, October 1944.

The second world war had been raging for five years and the allied liberation of Europe was into its fourth month, rural England was awash with military traffic, the heavy machinery of war heading south.

Unfortunately many of the roads were not up to the job, so many a bulldozer was employed to widen the thoroughfares to enable the passage of large and wide vehicles. Great Leighs in Essex was no exception, a US Army bulldozer clearing a section Dratchett Lane managed to dislodge a stone on the side of the road close to the St. Annes Castle pub on Scrapfaggot Green.

This was not good, that stone was there for a reason. According to the Sunday Mirror of the 8th October 1944;

"Two hundred years ago a witch was burned at the stake at the crossroads still known as Scrapfaggot Green, though there is no green there now. She was buried under the ashes of the fire that burned her, and a great stone was placed over her breast to hold her down. And for 200 years there she lay, untroubled and untroubling.

St. Annes Castle Pub (now just The Castle) Witch Stone on the right.

But war swept through the village, along Dratchett Lane and over the crossroads. The narrow, and winding lane would not take heavy traffic. So a bulldozer widened it - and brushed the Witch Stone aside."

Unless this witch had committed treason or had murdered her husband through witchcraft she would not have been burned at the stake, hanging was the accepted form of execution for witchcraft in England, however, scrapfaggot could be a corruption of scratchfaggot meaning helper of the Devil. Be that as it may, strange things were afoot in Great Leighs.

Sunday Mirror - 8th October 1944;

"It was from that moment that the people of Great Leighs date the strange happenings in the village. Now there's hardly a man or woman who has not some story to tell of happenings that don't fit in with ordinary common sense.

Councillor Arthur Sykes, Chief Warden, and village leading light, told me: 'Every day I hear of new mischief in the village. Alf Quilter, the shepherd will tell you of sheep straying from his fields where there is no hurdle out of place or a hole in the hedges big enough for a rabbit to run through.

Great Leighs in the 1940s

People have told me of hearing the church bells being rung at midnight. Yesterday the old church clock was found to be two hours slow, and I don't remember it being wrong before."

Councillor Sykes is no superstitious Essexman, he is a hard headed Lancashireman. 'I don't believe in witches,' he says, 'but then my great grandad didn't believe in radio. He'd have thought I was daft if I'd told him that a man could tune into a little box in America and be heard in Blackpool.

No I don't believe in witches - but I've got to admit there have been strange happenings here since that old stone was shifted.'"

Following this interview the "hard headed Lancashireman" found that his geese had disappeared into thin air! Other strange occurrences were some long heavy scaffolding poles had been moved and scattered around like twigs, some painter and decorators tools, paints, pots and brushes were gone, later they were found under a bed at the top of some rickety stairs in an attic. 

A dead chicken with it's neck twisted was found in a water butt, the local vicar scoffed at this saying it was the work of an animal, then he fell over a stone that was in his way, the stone was not there before, it had recently been moved there, it took three men to lift it away and no one had a clue as to where the stone had come from.

After a calm and still night farmer Ernest Withen said the following morning his haystacks were found "tumbled and spread around his yard," his carts had all been turned around in their sheds, something that took several men half an hour to put right.

Back in London these strange happenings were related to the paranormal investigator Harry Price, Price was famous for his investigations into the haunting of Borley Rectory.

Harry Price had a theory;

"It had been proved to the hilt that poltergeists exist. In my book 'Poltergeist Over England' I have listed over 500 cases of such spirits tricks. Many of them have been put down to the influence of witches.

I have several stories like yours. The spirit usually confines itself to one house, but there have been cases before of a whole village being affected."

Well that's that cleared up! The good folks of Great Leighs and Harry Price decided on a direct approach, they had the stone put back.

Sunday Mirror - Sunday 15th October 1944;

"It was partly public opinion and partly the advice of Mr Harry Price that led to this strange little ceremony. The villagers, led by the Chairman of the local Council, went in a body to the bleak cross roads and pushed and tugged the two ton monument back into place - just as it had been when their forefathers burned the old witch in the 17th century.

'That ought to keep the cunning little old woman comfortable,' said Bill Waver with a sigh of relief. Only the previous day the witch had had a final fling. The victim was Mr Conrad Moth, who found his rabbits roosting in the chicken house with the hens.

Although Mr Price doesn't altogether subscribe to the theory that the witch herself came out at midnight to push over a farmer's hayricks, to let sheep and cattle stray, or to dump chickens in water butts, he believes that the moving of the stone and the emotion it aroused may have loosened a mischievous spirit - or poltergeist - in the neighbourhood.

As Shepherd Alf Quilter said, as he watched the ceremony 'I reckon the witch must have been at home when we put her front door back' for today it is all quiet in Scrapfaggot Green."

So who was this witch? According to Mr R. J. Thompson's article "The Witch Hunter" in the Essex Newsman of Tuesday 27th February 1945, she was perhaps one of the poor souls who met her end at the hands of the infamous Matthew Hopkins at Chelmsford in July 1645.

After this trial 15 women were executed, many more men and women were imprisoned in Chelmsford Castle accused of witchcraft, all on the flimsiest and down right far fetched of evidence.

There was an interesting article in the Perfect Occurrences of Both Houses of Parliament and Martiall Affairs in August 1646, that stated;

"From Hartford, letters tell us that two were condemned for Witches, who should have been executed the last Saturday, but were repreaved in regard that some had suppositions of better things towards them, some feared the Witchtakers seek the price of blood more than to discover Witches, which is a fearful thing if true, as some were hanged at Chelmsford in Essex."

Such rough justice would make a poltergeist of the best of us. The events that year were very prankish, and no doubt a hoax was being perpetrated, could the culprits be found at the nearby US Army base, or local wags out for some fun, we will probably never know.