Long Compton Witches

Long Compton, a village at the foot of the Rollright Hills in Warwickshire, built an exceptional reputation for witchcraft from the 17th century onward. Folklore held that sixteen witches operated in the village—enough, one local saying ran, to pull a wagon up Meon Hill. An area by the Red Lion pub became known as 'Witch End.' Specific tales circulated: one witch was said to ride along the road in a 'dough kibbler' (a dough-cutting machine); another concerned a dying woman who could not expire until her relatives stepped out and a black pigeon flew from the window; necromancy and the raising of the dead was attributed to local practitioners. The Rollright Stones, a prehistoric stone circle a mile south of the village, were themselves believed to be a king and his army petrified by a local witch—a tradition whose earliest documented form dates to the mid-19th century but may draw on much older belief.

The tradition reached its violent endpoint on 15 September 1875, when John Haywood, aged 44, attacked Ann Turner, aged 79, in the road at the edge of the village, stabbing her repeatedly with a pitchfork. At trial Haywood declared Turner had tormented him for years with the Evil Eye, had bewitched his cattle, and that 'she kept toads in her garden.' Rather than convicted of murder, Haywood was committed to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum—a verdict that implicitly acknowledged the living force of the belief system behind the killing. The case attracted national newspaper attention and was reported in the Illustrated Police News.

The Long Compton witch tradition has been examined by Michael Howard (writing for The Cauldron magazine), by folklorist Jennifer Westwood, and by researchers at Our Warwickshire. It represents a rare case where rural witch-belief survived in documented form into the Victorian period with a specific named victim, a named killer, and a court record.