My children love Edith Nesbit’s books. I love them too! I remember reading them when I was younger, and now my children listen to them in the car on the way home from school.
You’ve probably heard of some of her books, even if you haven’t read them: The Railway Children is probably her most famous, but she also wrote Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Story of the Amulet, and The Enchanted Castle (as well as many, many others!)
At the time Edith was writing, over 100 years ago, she was just as famous as any best-selling children’s author today. Children awaited each new book eagerly–and with good reason.
Edith had a ferocious imagination, writing stories full of magic, adventure and drama, and she understood how children think: what they love, fear and desire.
Her depiction of sibling relationships is note-perfect, capturing the little jokes and quarrels that exist between brothers and sisters, as well as the fierce loyalty that can turn in an instant to bitter hostility, then back again in the next second!
You may be wondering why I am writing about Edith Nesbitt. Well, as it turns out she lived for a while not very far from where I live now – in Eltham in south-east London!
Her home was a place called Well Hall, an 18th century manor house which was built on the remains of a much earlier, medieval manor house of the same name.
Interestingly, there were two manor houses recorded in Eltham in 1100: East Horne and Well Hall. Neither manor is still standing (unfortunately) but their names remain.
Well Hall gives its name to Well Hall Road and Well Hall Pleasaunce – a sort of small park or garden – and East Horne manor lives on in the neighbourhood of Horn Park, which is in fact where I live!
As I said, the original medieval Well Hall manor was pulled down and rebuilt in the 18th century, but the barn that was built next door in the Tudor era remains, and is home to the Tudor Barn restaurant today.
Edith Nesbit lived in Well Hall from 1899 to around 1920. During this time she wrote many of her most famous novels, including the ‘Psammead Series’ (Five Children and It; The Phoenix and the Carpet; The Story of the Amulet), The Railway Children and The Enchanted Castle.
If you visit Well Hall Pleasaunce today (as I did) you’ll find some lovely wood carvings of the Psammead (the sand fairy from Five Children and It), the Phoenix (the magical fire bird from The Phoenix and the Carpet) and a dragon in honour of the many magical creatures Edith Nesbit wrote about.
I had a great time walking in Edith’s footsteps (you can see my outing in the video that goes with this blog post). It was wonderful to walk where she would have walked, and to think what she might have seen and smelled and heard when she lived there.
The place would have been a lot quieter, with no main road, much fewer shops, and the whole place consisting of a small village in the countryside rather than a busy London suburb.
Despite these differences, however, it was very moving to have that connection to someone who was so influential in children’s writing.
Later in the day I visited Railway Children Walk in nearby Grove Park. It’s not much – just a narrow footpath behind some houses, leading to a bridge over a railway line – but as I walked down I had the sensation of walking away from the bustle of London and into a quiet place all by itself.
It was as if I was walking back in time to that period when there were fewer cars and no planes, no mobile phones and no internet. Back, in fact, to the era of The Railway Children, when trains ran on steam and the two World Wars hadn’t happened yet.
It reminded me that history isn’t confined to the past: it’s all around us. Sometimes it’s hidden, and you have to go digging for it; but sometimes you’ll come across it quite suddenly and unexpectedly.
It’ll be there in a place name, a street sign, a plaque on a wall or a rise in the ground. If you don’t know what it is you’ll probably miss it – but if you go out in your local area with an idea of what to look for you’ll find the past rushing up to meet you.
With that in mind, here’s this week’s Writing Challenge. In fact it’s not so much a challenge as an adventure!
Your challenge is to find out about a person who lived in your local area a long time ago, and see if you can find anything of them left behind, and record it on the sheet. They don't have to be very famous, but it would be good to know if they did something important or helpful.
You might not find much. It might just be a street name; it might be a house where they lived; it might be a path they used to walk along. Whatever it is, see if you can find it, and either draw it or take a picture.
Then write a description of the place as it might have looked when that person was alive. If it was long enough ago it might have changed a lot – or it might not have changed at all! Either way, it’s fascinating to think about how the past relates to the present. Include the person in your scene if you can.
In
1905 the football legend Lily Parr was born. Some readers will be frowning;
they’ve never heard of Lily Parr, so how can she be a football legend?
Ah,
but that’s exactly why Lily’s story is so fascinating!
Lily
Parr was the fourth child of a hardworking family, living in the industrial
outskirts of the city of Liverpool. The gas-lit, smoggy streets running between
rows of back-to-back housing, were where this small girl decided she much
preferred a kick about with her brothers to household pastimes. The older boys
soon stopped laughing at little Lily when they saw the strength of her kick,
speed and skill.
Lily Parr’s school portrait
When
World War 1 began in 1914, Lily was nine years old. Britain needed every
available man to defend Europe from invasion by the Germans. Men and boys
signed up to join the army in their thousands, but it wasn’t enough, and soon
it was compulsory for young fit men to go away to fight.
The
normal pattern of life turned on its head.
With huge numbers of men at war, the women and girls now worked in the
factories making the ammunition needed by the army. They played football in
their breaks, and soon began playing matches against other factories.
Crowds
flocked to watch matches played for wartime charities, and the quality of the
ladies football game grew. With so many men at war, women’s football surged in
popularity with matches every weekend.
When
the war ended in 1918, the men began to take their factory jobs back from the
women, who were expected to return to their roles in the home. But ladies
football had become a very popular sport in its own right. Some of the teams
had legions of adoring fans.
By
1919, aged just 14, Lily Parr was nearly 6 foot tall, strong and fit. Her
football skills had not gone unnoticed. She was playing for a local ladies
team, when she was talent spotted by the best team in the country, Dick Kerr
Ladies, based at the factory of the same name. Offered a factory job, a family
to board with, and a chance to play for money, her concerned parents are forced
to agree. Lily loved football and this was her big chance.
In
Lily’s first season with Dick Kerr Ladies, she scored 43 goals. By 1920 her
skills were being noticed by a wider audience and she was considered a star.
Lindsay Galvin is the author of Darwin's Dragons, My Friend the Octopus and The Call of the Titanic. After working for over 20 years as a teacher, Lindsay is now a full-time writer. To find out more visit lindsaygalvin.com/
Since our humble beginnings in August 2021 we’ve welcomed twenty-four guest contributors to our YouTube channel and blog, as well as two new additions to our original line-up of five.
We’ve also bid farewell to two Time Tunnellers: Jeannie Waudby and Catherine Randall. Parting is always such sweet sorrow, but the friendships we have made have not ended with their time in the group.
Part of the reason we formed the Time Tunnellers was as a place for authors of historical fiction for children to support and encourage each other, and this will always be the case: once a Time Tunneller, always a Time Tunneller!
Thousands of people have watched over 200 hours of our videos, and over 150 people have joined us as regular YouTube subscribers. If you’ve not subscribed yet, you can do it today! Head on over to our YouTube channel and click ’subscribe’ - and don’t forget to click the bell icon to allow all notifications: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY7LQZiq-eVaIg4AINuLpKg
We’ve covered almost the entire history of the world, from Ancient Egypt up to the Second World War and beyond - and we’re not going to stop now! We’ve had a blast researching subjects as varied as the history of soap and glass, the legacy of slavery in the London Docklands, Christmas traditions, gladiatorial combat, pirates, queens, earls and criminals - and setting a weekly writing challenge to go with each one.
We’d like to take a moment to thank you, dear reader, for reading our blog and watching our videos. If you’ve shared the Time Tunnellers with teachers and librarians that you know, then thank you again! Without our readers and watchers we are nothing. We look forward to delving further into the stories in history with you, and sharing the fascinating things we find.
A new member of the team …
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that we said we’ve welcomed two new additions to the team. So far you will only have met one, and we’re pleased and proud to be able to introduce the second one to you today!
Robin Scott-Elliot is a Scottish author of children's historical fiction, including 'Sweet Skies', 'The Acrobats of Agra', and his latest book 'Finding Treasure Island', which traces the origins of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous adventure. Robin worked for many years as a sports journalist, writing for the BBC, ITV, Sunday Times and Independent, before packing it all in to become a children's author. We asked Robin to tell our followers a little bit more about himself ...
Hi Robin. To start with, can you tell us what led you to exchange journalism for children's fiction?
My children! It was a combination of moving home to Scotland and our two daughters making me promise to write a story for them – on long journeys I used to tell them Scottish stories, a mix of myth and history, part made up, part what I could remember my granny and mum telling me. Now they wanted me to write one down. So I made a promise.
Ten years ago, when we decided to leave London for Scotland, I swapped roles with my partner. She travels a lot for her job in TV so I stayed home with the kids and gradually did less journalism and more story writing. It was Karen who gave me the opportunity to have a proper go at writing for children – and Iona and Torrin who pestered me to write for children. I owe the three of them big time!
So why did you make historical fiction your genre of choice?
History was my favourite subject at school and I’ve never lost interest in it. I’m probably a frustrated historian at heart. It was also my favourite genre to read for as long as I can remember. I used to like Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Roman stories or DK Broster’s Jacobite trilogy. Even my comics/graphic novels were historical when I was at school – Tintin or Asterix.
When it comes to writing historical fiction, I like the idea of putting a character of mine into a real moment in time. Or trying to write a real person, like Robert Louis Stevenson in Finding Treasure Island; work out what they might have been like and bring them back to life – while making sure you try to be true to who they were.
Is there an era, event or person you'd really love to cover, but you haven't been able to yet?
Lots! That’s the great thing about writing historical fiction – there are so many places to go, stories to discover. For the Acrobats of Agra it was one line in an old history book – “among those trapped in the siege was a French travelling circus” – that sparked the story. You never know what you’re going to find or where it might take you.
I’ve always wanted to write something about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite march to Derby. Or one set way back in the days when the Lord of the Isles held sway in Scotland. Or a story set around the Russian Revolution and Civil War. Or the French Revolution – revolutions and rebellions are always good settings for a story I think! Or how about fictionalising Camille Fily, who rode the Tour de France in 1904 aged 17, the youngest ever rider, a race full of cheating and fighting and guns – and some cycling!
The book I’ve just finished writing is set in the years after the Second World War. It’s about the Ratlines, the escape routes Nazis used to get out of Europe, and revenge. I’m interested in what happens to people after major events. Because that’s the thing that fascinates – history never ends. What happened next? There’s always something to find.
And what are you hoping for as a member of the Time Tunnellers?
To burrow into all sorts of different periods of history and help retell the stories. History is not just about kings and queens and generals and prime ministers. The history of children, and children’s contribution to history, is so often overlooked – Svetlana Alexeivich, a brilliant oral historian, wrote a staggering book called Last Witnesses, recording memories of children in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. She’s tried to make sure what young people went through is not forgotten.
You Time Tunnellers make history come alive and I’d like to help do that as well. Some of the most successful podcasts at the moment, being downloaded in their millions, are about history – people are interested in our pasts. Because history is exciting. And history matters, always has and always will.
Thanks so much for answering our questions, Robin. We can’t wait to see where our time tunnelling adventures take us next!
Looking back
Our 100 videos so far have provided us with some great moments and brilliant memories. Here are some reflections from Time Tunnellers old and new:
Ally Sherrick
Settings are often the first spark for my own stories and I've particularly enjoyed my fellow Time Tunnellers' 'on location' videos.
Favourites include Susan's trip into the brilliant miniature world of engineering toymaker maestro, Frank Hornby at the museum dedicated to his inspirational creations at Maghull, near Liverpool.
Also Barbara's guided tour of the atmospheric Culloden Battlefield site, near Inverness, the setting for her exciting Jacobite Rebellion book 'The Reluctant Rebel'.
And then there's Catherine's post from the Wright Brothers National Memorial Museum in North Carolina, USA all about the famous early pioneers of aviation - 'First to Flight'.
And I had great fun out in the wilds myself doing a spot of Time Tunnelling filming at one of my best-loved historic sites in the UK, the ruins of Chysauster Romano-British village near Penzance.
History and the stories hidden inside it are all around us - you just need to remember to pack your curiosity. Oh, and something to dig with too!
Barbara Henderson
What a long way we have come since those very early tentative conversations about ‘maybe doing something for those of us who write historical fiction’. What a learning curve it has been too - I had done very little video recording and editing until we started the YouTube channel.
I am obviously thrilled to have another Scot on the Time Tunnellers team in Robin now, too - and for me, time-tunnelling has been a brilliant excuse to explore some places which were significant in Scotland’s past for myself. Yes, all these videos have been challenging to record or edit at times - but what I love is that they are now there as a resource for schools whenever they may want them. Take a look!
Sometimes the best videos are the ones about history you didn’t know you wanted to know about! For me, an example of that was Catherine’s video about the history of holidays, Thomas Cook and all that! She gets extra brownie points for dressing up too - I loved it, and I think that any youngsters will find it interesting too.
The same goes for Ally Sherrick’s mediaeval banquet video- who knew that putting a meal on the table could be so complicated! And again, much kudos for the dramatic presentation and props - it goes a long way for me as a Drama teacher.
Another favourite was Susan Browrigg’s video on female pirates - I had never given any thought to the fact that pirates may have been women, not had I heard of the famous pirate graveyard!
I also loved Matt’s recent video offering a tour of a Tudor hall - especially the nifty manoeuvring across an actual map - an ideal resource for anyone studying the Tudors.
My favourite video by Matt must be the one on the ghost signs - I had never, ever really noticed them, but on a recent trip to London I could not help looking up - only because I had watched his video. As I said - a bit of history that I didn’t know I wanted to know about - but I really did!
In terms of Guest Time Tunnellers, Lindsay Littleson’s video on travelling in 3rd class on Titanic was a real eye opener, and I think that schools would find it really fascinating. We should be proud of our back catalogue!
Matthew Wainwright
From the first time I saw one of the Time Tunnellers’ videos I was hooked! Their enthusiasm and passion for history shone through, and I learned more than I thought possible in the space of three and a half minutes. TED Talks, eat your heart out!
I remember thinking what a precious thing it was to have authors talking about history. Children relate to authors in a particular way - they trust them as custodians of stories, and often feel like they've come to know their favourite authors just through reading their books … which I suppose is quite possible, in a way.
Having authors talk about historical subjects gave them a special kind of life - and there was always the fact that you then had a brilliant book to go to if you wanted to learn even more!
The first videos I remember seeing were their Birth of a Book series for World Book Day 2022, followed closely by a powerful run of videos for Women's History Month. They got me hooked!
Aside from those, one of my favourites was Catherine Randall's overseas location shoot for The Lost Colony - the story of the first English settlers on Roanoke Island in North Carolina, who vanished without a trace in the late 16th century. I love a good mystery, and it felt very exotic to have a Time Tunneller reporting from the states!
I was thrilled, honoured, and a little disbelieving when I was asked, first to contribute as a guest, and then to join the team in late 2022. It's been a fantastic year, working with brilliant colleagues to produce outstanding videos that I know will be used and enjoyed for many years to come.
Susan Brownrigg
I am so proud that the Time Tunnellers have achieved 100 videos! I have relished the opportunity to explore a new topic when it has been my turn and I have ventured out to some fab locations for research including Windermere, Worsley Delph, Maghull, Pendle Hill and of course Blackpool!
I have also had great pleasure inviting some of my favourite authors to take part including M A Bennett, Jenni Spangler, Marie Basting, Laura Noakes and Richard O'Neill among them! I do hope you will watch their videos, if you haven't already!
I have learned so much history from watching the Time Tunnellers videos and I hope you will investigate our playlists and see just what a variety of subjects we have covered since we began back in in August 2021.
Recording the videos is always fun, even if it takes several takes, but the one I most enjoyed making was the BBC one when I got to play homage to presenter Annette Mills and the famous puppet!
Congratulations Time Tunnellers! Here's to the next 100 videos!
Competition Time!
To celebrate our 100th video, we’ve joined forces for a historical hamper giveaway! We’ve all donated books, making a great mini-library for any classroom or home bookshelf.
Ally Sherrick
The Queen's Fool
Vita and the Gladiator
Barbara Henderson
Rivet Boy
The Chessmen Thief
The Siege of Caerlaverock
Matthew Wainwright
Out of the Smoke
Through Water and Fire
Robin Scott-Elliot
Sweet Skies
Finding Treasure Island
Susan Brownrigg
Gracie Fairshaw and the Mysterious Guest
Kintana and the Captain’s Curse
Entering is very simple: just head on over to the giveaway posts on our social media channels and like, repost (where possible) and tag a friend in the comments. Don’t forget to make sure you’re following us so we can get in touch if there’s good news!
People all over the world celebrate Christmas in different ways. From the enormous Yule Goat constructed of straw in Sweden, to the Pastorelas (Shepherd’s Plays) of Mexico, to a game of Trivial Pursuit alongside a box of Quality Streets in the UK, people have created their own traditions around this major Christian festival.
But what about people in the past? How different were their Christmas celebrations from our own? To find out a little bit about what might have changed, let’s go back five hundred years to Tudor England under the reign of King Henry VIII …
The Twelve Days of Christmas
You’ve probably heard the carol that begins, “On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me …” and ends with the unfortunate recipient of the gifts having their house overrun by poultry and leaping lords.
In Tudor times Christmas really was twelve days long! Starting on December 25th and ending on January 5th, people downed tools and took part in a number of traditions, one for each of the twelve days.
On Christmas Eve (December 24th) people would decorate their spinning wheels with greenery brought in from outside, signifying that work was stopping for the duration of Christmas. Christmas trees came a lot later - in Tudor times people would ‘deck the halls with boughs of holly’, and festoon their houses with ‘the holly and the ivy’.
On Christmas Day itself people would eat! The Tudors knew how to throw a party, and they would have feasted in the best style they could afford.
Roast meats featured prominently (including Turkeys, which were a new delicacy and could be seen being driven in huge flocks from London to Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire) as well as pies that contained two or three different kinds of bird meat alongside fruit and spices.
Mince pies were originally filled with actual minced meat, spiced and mixed with fruit - until later the meat was taken out, and all that remained was the spiced fruit with the rather confusing name of ‘mincemeat’!
One famous tradition is that of the Boar’s Head, commemorated in the Boar’s Head Carol. In a spectacle echoing back to ancient pagan origins, a boar’s head would be cooked and garlanded with fruits and herbs, and brought into the feasting hall on a magnificent platter. The Boar’s Head Feast is still celebrated in Oxford University’s Queen’s College to this day!
The Feast of St. Stephen was on what we now call Boxing Day. It was a day for charity and giving to the poor, and it’s immortalised in the carol ‘Good King Wenceslas’ who looked out on the Feast of Stephen to see a poor man struggling through the snow, and was moved to bring him ‘flesh and wine’.
Child Bishops were appointed in churches from 6th December until Childermas on 28th December. A young boy, usually a member of the choir, would be adorned with all the regalia of a bishop for this time, and would take services and preach sermons!
Childermas commemorated the children that were killed on the orders of King Herod, as depicted in the moving Coventry Carol:
O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay?”
New Year’s Day was the traditional day for giving gifts. People gave gifts to show their appreciation to those in authority over them, and those at court were expected to give presents to the king.
Tudor Christmas presents could be expensive - but they were an excellent way to make sure you stayed in favour in the coming year! Just think about that next time you’re doing your Christmas shopping …
Father Christmas
One of the most endearing and bizarre Tudor Christmas traditions was the appointment of a Lord of Misrule to preside over the twelve days of festivities.
Revived by Henry VII, the post of Lord of Misrule was a way to upset the normal order of things. Someone would be chosen to direct all the Christmas celebrations, and would preside over them in a mock court, receiving mock homage from the revellers.
In Scotland, the same position was held by the Abbot of Unreason - although with the progression of the Reformation across Britain these traditions slowly faded away.
The idea of a Lord of Misrule does persist today, however, in the unlikely form of Father Christmas! Lords of Misrule were sometimes given names like ‘Captain Christmas’, ‘The Christmas Lord’ or ‘Prince Christmas’.
In 1616, the playwright Ben Johnson put on a Christmas play featuring an old man called ‘Christmas’ or ‘Old Gregorie Christmas’. He had sons and daughters called ‘Mince Pie’, ‘Misrule’, ‘Carol’ and others, and he had a long beard.
So the idea continued through the 1600s, the character appearing in numerous Christmas plays. He always personified Christmas parties and games, however, and had less to do with the idea of bringing presents. And as you can see in the picture above, he sometimes rode a goat!
Another tradition had been around in Europe for a long time - that of St. Nicholas, based on the real-life figure of a Bishop from Turkey. On St. Nicholas’ day (6th December) children were given presents to commemorate his gold-giving exploits.
According to tradition, St. Nicholas (or ‘Sinterklaas’) would deliver presents by passing through locked doors or descending chimneys. In Dutch markets, Sinterklaas impersonators could be found wearing his distinctive red and white robes …
It’s possible that the legend of Sinterklaas crossed the Atlantic to the North American Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, which later became New York.
However it happened, Santa Claus born, and eventually immortalised in Clement Clark Moore’s poem, ‘The Night Before Christmas’, where we find many of the features of our familiar Santa, including a huge belly, red costume and reindeer.
For a while Santa Claus and Father Christmas existed side-by-side, even appearing together in an 1864 story by Susanna Warner. But eventually the two merged, although in the UK the character has traditionally kept the name Father Christmas, harking back to the Lord of Misrule and providing us with a fascinating link to the Tudors!
And Christmas traditions are still evolving, with Elf on the Shelf and other festive celebrations taking their place in the hearts and lives of British people.
Writing challenge
For your writing challenge this week, become a Lord of Misrule! Come up with your own crazy Christmas tradition, and make it as weird and wonderful as you like, to rival the things you've read in this post. Perhaps you decide that everyone should bow to cats on the Thursday before Christmas, or that presents are brought to good children by flying ants ...? Go wild!
About the author
Matthew Wainwright is an author of children's historical fiction, and a member of the Time Tunnellers. His first book, 'Out of the Smoke' is set in Victorian London and was inspired by the work of Lord Shaftesbury with chimney sweeps and street gangs. His second book, 'Through Water and Fire', is set in Tudor England and features Anne Boleyn and the English Reformation.
Your sister, brother, mother and grandmother have confessed to witchcraft - and you must give evidence against them! That's what happened to nine-year-old Jennet Device in 1612.
Jennet was the star witness in one of three cases being tried known collectively as the Lancashire Witch Trials - that took place at the summer assize at Lancaster Castle.
Lancaster Castle (photo by Susan Brownrigg)
Those accused of witchcraft included a group of twelve people who lived around Pendle Hill, three women from Samlesbury, near Preston, a woman from Padiham. near Burnley and another from Windle, near St Helens.
The accused were kept together in a pitch black dungeon in horrendous conditions without access to lawyers. Coercion and torture were used to extract confessions that could be used as evidence against them - and neighbours and family members were made to testify against them.
PENDLE WITCHES
Jennet's sister, was 19-year-old Alizon Device - she was walking across a field when she came across a peddlar (someone who sells items for a living) called John Law. She asked him for some metal pins - it's unclear if she was begging or wanted to buy them - but he refused her. She was so cross that she cursed him, and soon after he had an attack that caused some kind of paralysis - probably a stroke.
Things quickly snowballed - when Roger Nowell the justice was brought in to investigate, Alizon not only confessed but incriminated other members of her own family and the rival Chattox family.
Nowell quizzed more members of both families.
Alizon's grandmother - known as Old Demdike - admitted she had a familiar or devil spirit called Tib. She also confessed to killing a man and a child - saying that making clay figures was the speediest way to take a man's life away.
Depiction of Old Demdike with familiars
on display at Pendle Heritage Centre
The head of the other family - Anne Whittle, known as Old Chattox also confessed to having a familiar or devil spirit - this one called Fancie. She also said she had killed men and children, making clay images for hurting life and limb - and to bewitching milk and ale and bewitching and killing two cows.
Anne Whittle's daughter Ann Redfearn denied being a witch - but she was sent to face trial alongside the other three women.
Not a week later, on Good Friday, 20 or more supporters of the women gathered for a special meeting at Malkin Tower. It is said they fed on stolen mutton. Nowell heard about it and resumed his investigation - believing it was an example of a witches' sabbath - a Midnight meeting for witchcraft.
Nowell questioned the Device family and Jennet and her brother James incriminated their mother, who confessed to being a witch, having a familiar, making clay figures and killing two men.
James himself confessed to crumbling a clay image of a woman and causing her 'lingering' death after she had accused him of stealing peat for his fire. He also said he had a familiar - Dandie who appeared as a brown dog or hare.
He also said the meeting had been arranged to discuss blowing up Lancaster Castle, murdering the gaoler and freeing the four women imprisoned there.
Statue of Alice Nutter in Roughlee
(photo by Susan Brownrigg)
Jennet named a number of people at the meeting including Alice Nutter, a gentlewoman (and a Catholic) from nearby Roughlee.
Now Jennet's brother, James, her mother, Elizabeth, Alice Nutter and four others from the meeting were sent to the dungeons at Lancaster Castle to face trial for witchcraft too.
Old Demdike died in the dungeon and her grandson, James was so traumatised that it was said he could neither speak, hear no stand at his trial.
The court proceedings were recorded by the court clerk, Thomas Potts, who later published his account as The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster.
The accused had no defence lawyer. Jennet was called as a witness - even though she was too young to normally be admissable.
She again incriminated her sister, brother and mother - and identified Alice Nutter as a witch by taking her hand. She described witches mounting ponies and flying into the air.
Jennet's mother was dragged out of court screaming at her daughter and shouting curses at Nowell.
Why did Jennet condemn her family? Historians think having no family to care for her, she was trained so that she would give evidence against those accused.
Some of those accused likely considered themselves witches, the two families may have competed for business. Claiming to have magical powers was a way of bringing in extra money.
King James I, who was on the throne at the time, definitely believed in witches. He was convinced that a coven of Scottish witches had tried to murder him and his wife by causing terrible storms as they travelled by ship from Denmark. He was so convinced by the power of witchcraft that he wrote a book on the subject called Daemonologie.
GUILTY
The judge found all but one of the group guilty. They were sentenced to hang by the neck until they died. The execution took place on Gallows Hill.
No-one knows what became of Jennet Device. 20 years later a Jennet Device was found guilty of witchcraft. Could it have been the same person?
Susan Brownrigg is a Lancashire lass. She is the author of Kintana and the Captain's Curse, and the Gracie Fairshaw mystery series. (Uclan Publishing)
It’s a thing: Other UK nations have patron saints too (St George for England, St David for Wales and St Patrick for Ireland) – but the Scottish St Andrew’s Saint’s Day is celebrated at the end of November - and as I am based in Scotland myself, I thought we’d spend a little while thinking about St Andrew’s Day, and the history surrounding it.
30th of November is not primarily marked as a religious festival nowadays – it is a day to celebrate all things Scottish, around the world. In Scotland, it is a national holiday, although it is left up to employers to decide whether their workers should have a day off.
Most young people still have to go to school.
Of course, Scotland is part of the United Kingdom and has been for hundreds of years, but it is a country with its own traditions (like Wales, or Ireland etc) and its own history. St Andrew’s Day is the perfect occasion to celebrate all of that.
In keeping with its national patron saint, the Scottish flag is known as the St Andrew’s Cross, or the Saltire – and it is said to be the oldest flag in Europe.
St Andrew was a disciple of Jesus and one of the twelve apostles. He was definitely not Scottish – he never even set foot in Scotland, but following his death, it is claimed that some of his relics were taken to St Andrews.
In the Middle Ages St Andrews became a popular pilgrimage destination because its church, soon replaced by a great cathedral, housed one of the saint’s teeth, a kneecap, arm and finger bones, or so the story went. Despite earlier references to him in Pictish and Scottish culture, he was only oficially claimed as the national saint of Scotland following the medieval Wars of Scottish Independence.
The trouble kicked off with Edward I's attempt to conquer Scotland in 1296. When the deaths of Alexander III (the previous Scottish king) and his granddaughter Margaret, Maid of Norway, left Scotland without a monarch, Edward used the invitation to help choose a successor as an excuse to claim the overlordship for England and himself.
When the Scots resisted, he invaded.
This resulted in a period of upheaval and violence as Edward and then his son tried to bring the rebellious Scots to heel – ultimately not successfully, thanks to Scottish leaders like William Wallace and, after Wallace’s execution, Robert the Bruce.
After Bruce’s army finally defeated the English army of Edward II at the Battle of Bannockburn, the Scots nobles drafted the Declaration of Arbroath in the year 1320.
Written in Latin, this amazing document survives to this day and can be seen at the National Records of Scotland. In it, the Scottish nobles claimed that Scotland was under St Andrew’s protection (‘the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter’s brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron for ever.’)
Choosing Saint Andrew as Scotland's patron saint was clever: it gave the country a crucial advantage: Saint Andrew was the brother of Saint Peter, founder of the Church – this meant that the Scots were able to appeal directly to the Pope for protection against the attempts of English kings to conquer the Scots.
In essence, the declaration is a letter from the barons and whole community of the kingdom of Scotland to the Pope, asking him to recognise Scotland's independence and acknowledge Robert the Bruce as the country's lawful king.
The power of words, right? Just check out the best-known passage in the Declaration of Arbroath:
‘As long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.’
Writing challenge:
What do you feel strongly about? What issue bothers you? And who could help? How would you persuade them? Write your own declaration, making sure that it is passionate and heartfelt (you could even invent a patron saint and claim that you have their protection.
Best of all, you could write your declaration in ink and decorate the first letter beautifully, just like the monks did at the time of the Arbroath declaration.
Barbara Henderson is a children’s writer and author of eight adventure stories for children. Her novel The Siege of Caerlaverock is set during the Scottish Wars of Independence, twenty years before the Declaration of Arbroath.
Fun fact: St Andrew is also the patron saint of Greece, Romania, and Russia (among others).
“Where do you get your ideas from?”
It’s a question I get asked all the time – and I’m sure all authors do. And every time I get asked my mind goes blank. But it’s a good question… if only I knew the answer, everybody’s answer.
Where do you get your ideas from?
I want to ask it of every author or movie maker. In fact, anyone who has created something that interests me. The scientist in their lab discovering, say, the Covid jag, the engineer who invented the jet engine. Where did you get your idea from Frank Whittle? What was the Eureka moment?
It was Archimedes, the ancient Greek scholar, who is supposed to have had the original Eureka moment – it’s a Greek word meaning ‘I’ve got it’. Legend has it he leapt from his bath and ran naked into the street shouting ‘Eureka’.
Legend is not always right.
I’ve made up a legend to tell the story of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Eureka moment; the moment that was to change his life forever, the moment that set him on the course to become one of the best known writers in the world, a fame that lasts to this day more than a century after he died aged only 44 in Samoa.
My ideas tend to begin as a muddle of thoughts. There is rarely a Eureka moment, although I did have one for my second book, Acrobats of Agra. They happen – and it feels fantastic when they do.
There was a great deal of chance involved too. I was in a bookshop with my daughter, she was taking ages to make her choice (she loves books), I wandered downstairs, saw the history section (I love history), saw an old book on the Indian Mutiny that interested me, bought it and while reading came across a single line about a French travelling circus being trapped in the siege of Agra. Eureka!
There’s a large serving of serendipidity in there too – several ‘What-ifs’. And that applies to Stevenson and his idea for Treasure Island.
Come back to 1881. Queen Victoria is on the throne, and staying near where my story is set. She’s on holiday at Balmoral, her Highland home (and makes a fleeting appearance in the book).
The presence of the Queen is why Braemar, the nearby village, became such a popular destination.
Stevenson arrived at Old Mrs McGregor’s Cottage in Braemar with his mother and father, his American wife Fanny and Sam, her teenage son, his old nanny, known as Cummy, Maggie, his parents’ maid, and a dog.
Stevenson was 30. He’d wanted to be a writer for as long as he could remember. And he was not a well man, had been sickly since childhood. Stevenson never thought he’d live a long life – so he really did worry time was running out.
He’d written well-received travel books but had never managed to finish a novel. He contemplated turning his back on fiction. Perhaps history was the way to go, perhaps a biography of the Duke of Wellington…
He needed something, anything, a spark…
And then it started to rain – of course it did, this was a Scottish summer holiday – and Stevenson had to stop worrying about himself and turn attention to his new stepson.
Sam Osbourne was 13 and something of a lost soul. He’d been dragged from place to place through his short life.
His father was an adventurer, a man always one break from making it big. And family seems to have come a poor second to his dreams of riches. The family shuffled around the wild west of the US and when his parents split, Sam, his younger brother and older sister, were taken off to Europe by Fanny, who fancied herself as an artist.
It was in France that Stevenson first leapt into their lives, jumping through a doorway into a hotel in Grez-sur-Long, a small town south of Paris that had become an artists’ colony.
By then Sam’s younger brother, Hervey, had died. His sister, Bel, was 10 years older. Sam felt alone.
From Paris, they went to London, returned to California then back across the Atlantic to Scotland. In this strange new land – how different to California – Sam clung to his new stepfather.
They developed a bond (much of the suggestion for this comes from Sam himself, but they do seem to have been close) and so one rainy afternoon in Braemar – imagine the rain smattering against the small windows of the cottage, the fire spitting and crackling – Stevenson reached for a piece of paper and drew a sketch to amuse a bored Sam.
It was a map. A map of an island that over the course of the afternoon grew ever more detailed until finally Stevenson wrote two words on the bottom and handed it to Sam.
‘Treasure Island,’ Stevenson had written and here was the spark. Eureka!
Treasure Island, a story that has sold millions of copies, been made into a movie time and time again and in a host of different languages. It’s a story that has defined the image of a pirate, a treasure hunt; it is the adventure story.
Stevenson later wrote an essay on how he came up with the story. But, rather like some of his characters, Stevenson is an unreliable narrator. His later account of how he came up with the idea for Jekyll and Hyde – in a dream – is barely believable, and differed to other versions he told friends and family.
It makes for a good story though – and that is what Stevenson is all about.
Perhaps it was freeing his mind of his worries just for one afternoon that helped Stevenson come up with Treasure Island; thinking about Sam rather than himself (what would have happened if it hadn’t rained?).
It wasn’t an original idea. Pirates had featured in plenty of other stories but then most ideas borrow something from other books, paintings, movies.
What Stevenson did was take his idea and make it into something unforgettable. In Finding Treasure Island I have tried to play with Stevenson’s idea and where it came from. Could it have come from Sam? Could Sam’s own adventures in the magical, mysterious glens, forests and hills around Braemar have foreshadowed Jim Hawkins’ trials and tribulations on Treasure Island?
It's Sam who tells us the story in Finding Treasure Island; this is his version of history. But is it true? Perhaps.
But what is undoubtedly true is that it all started with a map; a map and an ‘Eureka!’ moment.
Writing challenge – draw a map. It can be an island, a treasure island, a forest, a town, your own street and house – anywhere – but it must include an X because as every treasure seeker knows, X marks the spot. Once you’ve drawn your map, which can include dragons or castles or swamps or multi-storey car parks and shopping centres, write a short story about it.
Robin Scott-Elliot has been a sports journalist for 25 years with the BBC, ITV, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the ‘i’, covering every sport you can think of and a few you probably can’t.
He threw that all away to move home to Scotland and chase his dream of writing books instead of football reports. Once there his daughters persuaded him to write a story for them and that is how his career as a children's author began. Finding Treasure Island is his latest book and is published by Cranachan.
