The cave system at Wookey Hole in the Mendip Hills has been occupied by humans since the Palaeolithic, but the legend that defines it is medieval: a witch, said to have been jilted in love as a young woman, retreated to the innermost chambers of the caves and turned her bitterness outward. From her stone lair above the subterranean River Axe she laid curses on the young couples of the surrounding village, blighting romances, souring betrothals, and ensuring the happiness she had been denied would not grow for others. Cattle sickened; marriages failed; the witch's malice was particular about its targets but universal in its radius.
The story
The community's remedy came from Glastonbury Abbey, whose monks had a reputation for practical supernatural intervention. A monk — sometimes given as a young man who had himself suffered from the witch's interference in his own courtship — tracked her into the caves and followed her to a dark corner beside the underground river. He blessed the water and splashed it on the lurking figure; instantly, the witch was turned to stone, her form preserved in the mineral calcite that the cave's limestone geology continuously deposits. The stalactite formation she became is still pointed out to visitors as the Witch of Wookey Hole, a roughly human silhouette in the gloom. A smaller stone nearby is said to be her sleeping dog.
The first firm written reference to a witch in the caves appears in a manuscript compiled by Bulstrode Whitelocke in 1628, which mentions 'the witch of Ochies Hole.' Excavations by Herbert Balch in 1912 unearthed a Romano-British female skeleton in the cave — buried with a goat's skull, a knife, and a polished stalagmite ball — which popular accounts have since identified as the 'real witch,' though the forensic evidence is consistent with a range of Romano-British burial practices. The skeleton is held by the Wells and Mendip Museum. The Wookey Hole Caves visitor attraction, which has operated commercially since the Victorian era, maintains the witch legend as the centre of its public interpretation, and the site's official account closely follows the 17th-century manuscript record.