Pendle Hill

OVERVIEW

A 557-metre whaleback hill between the Ribble and Calder valleys in east Lancashire, with Barley, Newchurch, Roughlee and the site of Malkin Tower on its slopes. It is the country's witch-trial landmark: the trials of 1612, the best recorded in England, took twelve people from around the hill. George Fox had the vision on its summit in 1652 that began the Quakers.

HISTORY

In March 1612 a pedlar, John Law, collapsed after an encounter with Alizon Device; the magistrate Roger Nowell took confessions from her, her grandmother Elizabeth Southerns ('Demdike'), Anne Whittle ('Chattox') and others, and a meeting at Malkin Tower on Good Friday brought eight more charges. Nine were hanged at Lancaster on 20 August and one at York; the chief witness against the Devices was Jennet Device, aged nine. They were poor village healers and beggars, and the record is the clerk Thomas Potts's Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches (1613). A statue of Alice Nutter stands at Roughlee.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The hill's modern reputation is for the Halloween crowds, the 2004 Most Haunted Live broadcast and reports of figures and lights on the summit path; the witches themselves are the history, not the ghosts. The entry keeps the two apart: documented judicial killings, and a hill that people now go up at night to be frightened on.

VISITING

Open access; the usual path is from Barley. Halloween brings road closures and crowds; the villages ask for respect.