Riding Mill Witch-Hunt (NZ019614)

One of Riding Mill’s most prominent landmarks these days is The Wellington Hotel public house, sitting, as it does, on the north side of the main thoroughfare of the village. It is a popular stopping off point for travellers, but few will be aware of the establishment’s grisly past.

The building began life as a private residence in the mid 17^th century, and was known originally as Riding House. Not long after its construction, though, it became embroiled in an extraordinary tale of alleged witchcraft and an unfortunate suicide.

The story goes that in 1672 a young servant girl called Anne Armstrong had several of those episodes all too common at the time and began randomly accusing various individuals of dabbling in witchcraft. Anne lived at Birches Nook, Stocksfield, and after a minor argument with an old woman over some eggs she descended into a series of hysterical trances. Among her many rantings she accused three local women – Ann Forster of Stocksfield, Anne Dryden of Prudhoe and Lucy Thompson of Mickley – of dancing with the Devil and other shenanigans (including shape-shifting into various beasts) at Riding House.

The case rumbled on until it was finally heard at Morpeth Quarter Sessions in 1673, whereupon the magistrates considered young Anne’s account far too fanciful and dismissed it. The three defendants were therefore acquitted, and the matter was considered to be at an end.

However, Anne Armstrong, the deluded accuser, was to have the last, horrid word. For, shortly after the case was concluded, she was found hanged in the Riding House scullery. And (of course) her ghost is said to haunt the pub to this day…

Note: The case of the Riding Mill witch-hunt is considered to be unique in English witch trials, the various witchly goings-on having a distinctly ‘continental’ feel to them. Quite how a young North-East servant girl came to recount such stories has, however, never been properly explained.

Henry Ogle: Not to be Messed With (NU104195)

Eglingham Hall, like most buildings of its type, started small and has been added to considerably over the years. It began as a pele tower and today looks like this:

© Copyright Stephen Richards and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

When its development was somewhere in between, one Henry Ogle lived there for a time prior to his death in c.1669. He was a staunch Parliamentarian, and was at his most boisterous – nay, cocky – during the days of Cromwell. Around 1649-50 he was involved in two instances for which we have precious little information, but which nevertheless provide a neat little window into what was, at the time, a pretty crazy world.

The first occurred in the wake of the famous Newcastle Witch Trials of 1649. From Thomas Oliver’s A New Picture of Newcastle-upon-Tyne of 1831:

1649 – The Magistrates of Newcastle sent to Scotland for a man who pretended to discover who were witches: on his arrival the bellman went through the town, crying “all persons who would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for and tried by the person appointed.” Thirty women were brought into the town-hall, stripped there, and had pins thrust into their bodies, and most of them condemned for witches!

As a result, fourteen witches and one wizard were executed. The account continues…

The witch-finder went from Newcastle to Northumberland, when [magistrate] Henry Ogle, Esq. laid hold of him and required bond to answer at the sessions, he escaped into Scotland, where he was apprehended, cast into prison, and condemned; when on the scaffold he confessed that he had been the death of 220 women in England and Scotland, for the gain of 20 shillings each!

No one knows for sure who this notorious witch-finder was, but it may have been the infamous John Kincaid (however, Kincaid was not collared and executed until 1662, so there may be some confusion here).

Henry Ogle of Eglingham Hall may have played a prominent role in the casting out from the region of the pesky witch-hunters, but a year later he had a run-in with his ‘hero’ Oliver Cromwell, who, on the way to the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, stayed over at Henry’s house. Legend has it that the next morning the two of them quarrelled (over exactly what we don’t know), and that they may even have duelled over the disagreement.

I should think that their differences were soon patched up, though, as Henry was elected MP for the county in 1653 and 1654. But the story of the little dispute lived on, and inspired the poem Cromwell’s Visit: An Eglingham Legend by James Hall … and if anyone out there has the text of the said ditty I’d like to hear from them!

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Meg O’ Meldon (NZ108855)

The sleepy hamlet of Meldon in the Wansbeck valley a few miles west of Morpeth was once the home of one of the county’s most infamous ghosts, namely, Meg O’ Meldon. As with most such shadowy figures, the story of Meg is based loosely on fact – in this case that of a misery old woman (and suspected witch) by the name of Margaret Selby. There are spectral appearances, tales of misfortune (and good fortune), as well as, of course, hidden treasure...

Margaret was the daughter of William Selby of Newcastle, who was a well-known money lender. She married Sir William Fenwick of nearby Wallington, and brought with her to the arrangement the estate of Meldon. This all happened a long time ago – in and around the late 17^th century – and well before the construction of the current John Dobson-inspired effort known today as Meldon Park. Anyway, the only facts that seem to have trickled down to us from these distant days concern the infamy of Meg’s great meanness and avarice. Any income which came her way was greedily hoarded, being stashed away in any number of places across the parish. She was understandably disliked and therefore (of course) branded a witch; and when she and her husband passed into history, stories persisted of caches buried in almost every corner of the district.

Such was her reputation, though, that the locals claimed that her spirit continued to guard over her riches after her demise, wandering from pillar to post, triggering tales of ghostly apparitions aplenty in its wake. Meg’s spirit would travel hither and thither by way of a subterraneous coach road, and she would often be seen on Meldon Bridge in the shape of a little dog – or, indeed, ‘in a thousand forms, lights and colours, flickering over the Wansbeck, or under a fine row of beeches by the river.’ She would sometimes present herself as a mysterious, beautiful woman; or sit in a stone coffin at the site of Newminster Abbey (water from this trough was used to treat warts and other ailments).

Most famously, the ghost of Meg would sit guard over a well near Meldon Tower, where she was thought to have hidden a bull’s hide full of gold. She once enticed a local man to attempt its retrieval at the dead of night, but at the point of success he shouted in triumph, thus breaking the spell and causing the treasure to be dropped and lost forever.

Understandably, any discovery of value in the neighbourhood has been attributed to the legend of Meg. Once, when the ceiling of Meldon schoolhouse gave way, a stash of gold coins issued forth from the attic, sending the pupils into a ‘rich scramble’ for their unexpected windfall. Every time a stash is thus revealed and put to some good, so the spirit of Meg rests ever more soundly. And, though Meldon Well still hides its bag of riches, the ghost of Margaret Selby has long since disappeared from the banks of the Wansbeck.

The Witches of Hart (& Elwick) (NZ470351)

From A History of the County of Durham, Volume 3 (1928):-

Its near neighbourhood to the port of Hartlepool produced in Hart an unenviable number of witches and women of immoral life.  In 1454, ‘Helena de Inferno, alias morans in inferno, alias Meldrome,’ seems to have been as bad as her name implied.  On 28 July 1582, Alison Lawe of Hart was prosecuted for being ‘a notorious sorcerer and enchanter.’  Two women of the neighbourhood had consulted her and asked her for cures for the sick.  Fortunately this was before the outbreak of the witch superstition in the 17^th century, and Alison was condemned only to stand with a paper on her head once in Durham market, once in Hart Church and once in Norton Church.  She was peacefully buried at Hart six years later on 5 August 1588.  In 1596, Ellen Thompson ‘fornicatrix and excommunicated’ ‘was buried of ye people in ye chaer at ye entrance unto ye yeate or stile of ye church-yard on ye East thereof.’  On 12 February 1641, Old Mother Midnight of Elwick was buried, but it does not appear how she earned her name.

It is believed that the three latter, ‘confirmed’ witches are buried over the sty from Hart Cemetery so that locals could regularly walk over their graves in unconsecrated ground on their way to and from church.  This would ensure that they would be kept well-and-truly trodden underfoot.