In the ruins of St Mary's Church at East Somerton, deep in a Norfolk wood, a massive oak tree now grows where the nave once stood — its trunk rising through the roofless walls of the abandoned 15th-century church. Local legend says the tree marks the grave of a woman from the village who was accused of witchcraft and buried alive within the church by her neighbours. As she was interred, her wooden leg was said to have been planted with her, and over the centuries it took root and grew into the oak that dominates the ruin today, sometimes called 'the Witch's Leg' or 'the Witch's Finger'.
The story
The legend carries its own piece of living folk-practice: it is said that anyone who walks around the tree three times will release the witch's spirit. The story has become one of the best-known pieces of 'Weird Norfolk' folklore, regularly retold by local newspapers and the Norfolk Folklore Society, and the atmospheric ruin — oak growing through broken flint walls in dense woodland — remains a popular, if eerie, walking destination near Winterton-on-Sea.