Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History Owen Davies, Hambledon Continuum, 2007. A densely packed handy reference for all your folk magic queries. This deceptively slim octavo volume is, as we now expect from Professor Owen Davies, about as tightly packed with condensed information as it is possible to get. A pleasure as an immersive…
Dartington Hall and Old Church Tower, Devon The buildings visible today around the Great Hall on the Dartington estate can be dated to all centuries from the 14th to the 20th. This recording exercise has concentrated primarily on the medieval buildings, but has taken account of all periods of graffiti and the phases of building…
Church Folklore Church Folklore, A Record of some Post-Reformation Usages in the English Church, now mostly Obsolete. The Rev James Edward Vaux M.A., F.S.A Griffith Farran & Co. London 1894 ‘When we search into the religious records of the past we cannot help being, at times, painfully struck with what appears to us a gross…
Of Shadows: One Hundred Objects from the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic Simon Costin and Sara Hannat. Strange Attractor Press, London 2016 This sumptuous collection of wonderfully atmospheric photographs portraying just 100 of the many, many, curious objects housed in the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, North Devon is a…
Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe, Kathryn A. Edwards. Ashgate 2015 This volume of papers, though led and edited by Kathryn Edwards of the University of South Carolina, represents a pan-European area of research, with contributors from the UK, Finland France and Spain as well as ‘outsider’ input from the US and Australia. It…
A brief digression on Merchant Marks As part of my lockdown activities (because there are very few locked buildings you can attempt to record from the outside) I took time to catch up on my reading for several historic periods where I felt my knowledge was thin. Immersed in the 18th century and the Exeter…
The Ghost: A Cultural History ‘Ghosts are woven into the very fabric of our lives’. The evolution of a persistent human fear. In the catalogue of things that might be of enough concern for magical countermeasures to be necessary, the ghost is perhaps one of the most persistent. In this highly readable and entertaining book,…
The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment Michael Hunter, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2020 The English Protestant faith, having outlawed Catholicism and banned all forms of ‘Superstititious’ Catholic practices, apparently found itself in the latter part of the 17th century in a spot of bother with the freethinkers. Beleagured by controversies…
A group of masons’ marks from a canal tunnel in Bath. Kennet and Avon canal tunnel, under Cleveland House and Sydney Road, Bath, access via Sydney Gardens. Sydney Gardens were laid out as commercial pleasure grounds between 1792 and 1794, as part of Robert Adam’s grand plan of ‘Bath new Town’. The initial detailed design…
The Routledge History of Medieval Magic The Routledge History of Medieval Magic Sophie Page & Catherine Rider (Eds) Routledge 2019. A giant compendium of magic. This thick volume of papers brings together recent writing on a wide range of magical topics by both established and new scholars in the discipline. Its range is immense. Richard…
A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War Owen Davies, Oxford University Press, 2018 Small but perfectly formed. In keeping with the standard of publication we have come to expect from Professor Owen Davies, this is…
Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic, Bill Griffiths, 1996; reprinted 2012. An immersive and joyously erudite foray into the weirder parts of Anglo-Saxon life – but no index! The late Dr Bill Griffiths was, in no particular order: a poet, an Anglo Saxon scholar and an expert on the dialects of north-east England….
Material approaches to Roman Magic: Occult objects and Supernatural Substances Material approaches to Roman Magic: Occult objects and Supernatural Substances. Adam Parker and Stuart McKie, TRAC, Oxbow, 2018 Stern theoreticians wrestle with the nebulous and inconclusive. The back cover synopsis of this volume sums up, somewhat long-windedly, the need to extend archaeological research…
Mummies Cannibals and Vampires by Richard Sugg, Routledge, second edition, 2016. An enormous heap of curious information. Does that suggest that your devoted reviewer has been less than wholly entranced by Richard Sugg’s opus? It is all too terribly true. Dr Sugg (his Twitter handle) has amassed a large amount of information on a completely…
Illustrated Symbols and Emblems of the Jewish, Early Christian, Greek, Latin and Modern Churches. HJ Smith 1900; Kessinger Library Reprints 2010 A picture book for lockdown 2.0 Despite the not so catchy title, this scanned reproduction is a charming late-Victorian take on the immense amount of iconography to be found in…
Newes from Scotland, James Stuart; King James VI of Scotland, 1591. Possibly ghost written by James Carmichael. Bodley Head, reprint, 1924; Aziloth Books; Illustrated Edition, 2012 (with Daemonologie) Jacobean tabloid journalism at its finest. I feel a pause might now be necessary to allow the more traditional-minded of our readers to…
The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic. Ralph Merrifield, Batsford, 1987 The Daddy of them all. ‘ what is needed is an open mind and appreciation of the great diversity of human behaviour’ In 1987, Ralph Merrifield, retired archaeologist and recognised authority on Roman London, set out to publish, for the first time, a systematic review…
Grimoires, A History of Magic Books. Owen Davies, OUP 2009. ‘…for many down the millennia and across the globe no books have been more feared than grimoires.’ Thus Owen Davies introduces his exhaustive history of Magic Books, a complex and extensive survey of what, once one begins to pursue it, seems an endless road. That…
A fireplace lintel from a farmhouse in Stokeinteignhead, Devon As lockdown eased I was invited by a local farmer to look over an historic farmyard on the outskirts of this typical Devon village. The buildings comprise part of a busy working farm, and cannot be visited by the general public. The trapezoid of original farmyard…
Magical House Protection: the Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft. Brian Hoggard, Berghahn, 2019. A solidly researched synthesis of the archaeological information to date. Brian Hoggard’s 2019 book presents a thorough and vastly increased collation of information on the specific area of magical house protection, a subject first introduced to the public as barely more than a single…
The Book of English Magic. Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate. Hodder, 2009. Fun and games for a wet weekend in lockdown (or any other time) I was slightly surprised when I first opened my copy of this book and found that it was written not by historians but by a psychotherapist (Carr-Gomm) and a man…
Dull, with intervals of brilliance: The Handbook of Folklore, Traditional Beliefs, Practices, Customs, Stories and Sayings. Charlotte Sophia Burne, London 1913. I have to admit to readers that, even in a sternly enforced lockdown, I found this book hard to get into. My usual practice on reviewing a book is to read it (or re-read:…
The Discoverie of Witchcraft, wherein the Lewde dealing of Witches and Witchmongers is notablie detected, in sixteen books … whereunto is added a Treatise upon the Nature and Substance of Spirits and Devils. Reginald Scot. William Brome, London, 1584. ‘How diverse great clarkes and good authors have been abused in this matter of spirits…
St John the Baptist, Bishopsteignton, Devon Contrary to what you might expect, sometimes the worst thing that can happen to an historic building is to have too much money spent on it. Too little money and it might just dissolve back into the parent soil; the right amount and it survives from century to…
Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course. Roberta Gilchrist, Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2012; paperback 2018. The aim of this book, as stated on its rear cover, is to explore how medieval life was actually lived, from birth to death and covering every aspect of the life course in between. It is, as Professor Gilchrist notes…
The Trotula Edited and Translated by Monica H. Green. University of Pennsylvania Press 2001 An accessible English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine. This modest paperback book represents the pared-back core of a much larger academic work by Professor Green, who in 2001 published a hardback Latin – English translation, with the texts…
Magic in Medieval Manuscripts, Sophie Page, 2004; expanded hardback edition by British Library 2017. Small but perfectly formed: this books is a little jewel to brighten the dark January evenings. This is not a manual of spells and charms, though a number are included, nor is it simply a picture book, though the illustrations are…
Begun in 1604 and published in 1611, the King James Version became the Authorised Version of the Bible, and has never been out of print. Rebecca Ireland looks at it in the context of the study of magic and folklore. This monumental work of translation and refinement of all the Biblical texts known to exist…
As part of our series looking at older books, Rebecca Ireland talks about Ella Mary Leather’s classic collection of Herefordshire folktales. If local informants can be believed witches were rife in Herefordshire in the 19th century; cows were cursed or cured; the evil eye was a constant threat, and simply offending a neighbour could lead…
Abbey Barn, Glastonbury, Somerset Rural Life Museum The 14th century Abbey Barn at Glastonbury now forms the north range of a substantially 19th century farmyard, and is part of the Somerset Rural Life Museum. When built it would have been the abbey manor barn, sited just outside the precinct walls of the abbey complex. It…
Bath Abbey, Bath and Northeast Somerset The Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul, better known as Bath Abbey, has been undergoing a £19.3 million programme of major works, funded largely by the Heritage Lottery Fund, in order to repair the Abbey’s collapsing floor, install a new heating system using the nearby hot springs…
Devon, St Andrew Stokeinteignhead The church of St Andrew at Stokeinteignhead, South Devon, stands slightly above the surrounding cottages on the rising ground of a steep valley, which here widens out sufficiently to allow the formation of a village centre. The setting is constrained by the landscape, so that the relationship between church, church house…
St John the Baptist (St John on the Wall) Bristol The church of St John the Baptist, Bristol, also known as St John on the wall, is today more intimately associated with vibrant modern graffiti than with the tiny details of the historic kind. The structure incorporates the last surviving medieval city gate, and with its…
St John The Baptist, Higher Ashton, Devon The little church of St John the Baptist, at Higher Ashton in Devon would appear to be a place with an identity crisis. Pevsner and Cherry, the accepted guide to English buildings, refers to it as St Michael. Nicholas Orme, in his scholarly survey of English Church Dedications, finds…
St Lawrence Tower, Ashburton, Devon A visitor to Ashburton, approaching from the high ground of Dartmoor, might be forgiven for wondering why a small market town deserves two medieval churches with soaring Devon towers. The answer is simple, though it sounds as if it might be the start of a surreal pattern of riddling: one…
St Michael the Archangel, Ilsington, Devon St Michael Ilsington is a large church that lies at the heart of its village, is accessible by way of the church steps, which are directly adjacent to the pub, or by a level entrance from the southwest corner of the site, passing through a gatehouse which once housed the…
St Michael de Rupe, Brentor, Devon The phrase first coined by John Aubrey, of eighteenth century antiquarian fame, that a great many churches dedicated to St Michael are situated on high ground, has become something of a cliché – a cliché pretty well upheld by the stunning locations of some of the churches dedicated to…