7. Bewitched in East Budleigh! (3)

Continued from  
https://conant400.blogspot.com/2019/10/bewitched-in-east-budleigh-2.html

Top: The 1840 sign marking the foundation of a National School in Colaton Raleigh; the attractive-looking Drake’s School in nearby East Budleigh was built in 1860, though the first teacher was appointed in 1851

The village of Colaton Raleigh may have had a school as early as 1840 but overcoming countryside traditions such as belief in witchcraft through education was not achieved overnight.  

Credulity and prejudice continued to plague society, especially single women.  The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of 24 April 1852 reported that Susannah Sellick, a 70-year-old widow from Colaton Raleigh, was accused of witchcraft and attacked by Mary Pile and Walter Gooding from the neighbouring village of East Budleigh.

In the subsequent investigation it was revealed that Gooding had attempted to drive a nail into the ground where Susannah was standing in the belief that this would break her power. Mary Pile explained to the court that she needed to draw blood from the ‘witch’ who had cast a spell on her 20-year-old daughter Amy.

The couple were fined, the magistrates complaining that this was the third case in as many months where elderly women unjustly accused of witchcraft had been assaulted. 

Dark reputations were made by such accusations. Eight years later, poor Susannah was attacked again in a case reported in the Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser of 18 July 1860.  This time she complained that a lace-maker, Virginia Ebdon, had maliciously assaulted her in Colaton Raleigh, drawing blood. Susannah’s version of events was again accepted by the court and her assailant was fined.

The Church of St John the Baptist, Colaton Raleigh 

No further attacks on her were reported and she lived to the great age of 96, being buried at Colaton Raleigh on 23 March 1879.

The case of Susannah Sellick was revealed in great detail in Willow Winsham’s  book ‘Accused: British Witches Throughout History’ published by Pen & Sword Books Ltd in 2016. You can read a version of the case at http://winsham.blogspot.com/2014/12/

St Michael's Church, Otterton 

A similar case at around the same time of a woman from the  neighbouring village of Otterton is quoted by Owen Davies in his book Witchcraft, Magic and Culture 1736-1951, published by Manchester University Press in 1999. 

Sadly, the East Budleigh mill where Roger Conant was born is no more. But in the nearby village of Otterton the Mill, pictured above, still grinds corn and is open to visitors. A watermill was recorded in this locality in Domesday Book in 1068 AD 

In 1858 the elderly and 'half-witted' Mary Ford from Otterton was inevitably blamed when a young man and his future bride were taken with fits. Friends of the couple attacked Mary, leaving her with stab wounds; a subsequent investigation by the authorities led nowhere as nobody came forward to denounce the criminals. All believed that Mary was guilty of witchcraft.

This map, taken from Eric Delderfield's book 'The Raleigh Country' shows the area in which Roger Conant was brought up. The villages of East Budleigh, Otterton and Colaton Raleigh can be seen on the right, as can Budleigh Salterton - generally known in past times as Salterton

Small wonder that the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette’s  account ended with a lamentation that witchcraft is very prevalent amongst the illiterate in the Colaton, Salterton and Woodbury area.

And today? After all you’ve read you’d be forgiven for thinking that Roger Conant country is still rife with spells and pagan rituals.

Of course it’s not.

A sextet of scarecrows at East Budleigh's festival

The village does have a scarecrow festival of course. I was tempted to draw an admittedly uneasy parallel between this and Thomas Hardy’s portrait of the reddleman on Egdon Heath in ‘The Return of the Native’ – a diabolical figure, his clothing and flesh saturated with the red dye that he sold as redding for the sheep grazing beyond the heath, and, in Prof Tilley’s words ‘a traditional bogeyman for children’.

But it seems that the notion of the scarecrow as some kind of pagan manifestation, a survival of ancient pre-Christian fertility customs, is a modern myth. 

‘There is insufficient evidence to suggest that scarecrows were anything other than a useful measure to control animal pests in an agricultural setting, although many of them no doubt ended up on end-of season bonfires,’ writes Cardiff University’s Dr Juliette Wood in an online article ‘The Great Scarecrow in Days Long Ago: Gothic Myth and Family Festival’ https://www.juliettewood.com/papers/scarecrow.pdf

East Budleigh's All Saints Church, where the Conant - and the Raleigh families - worshipped.  

Image credit: Peter Bowler  

In any case East Budleigh’s Scarecrow Festival is organised by the Friends of All Saints Church.

Ironically, it’s in this ancient church that you find the above relic  which has clear pre-Christian associations. The corbel of the central pier of the northern arcade is carved with a ‘Green Man’ motif below a cornice of four-leaf decoration. The National Churches Trust comments that the motif is one of the most powerful and enduring pagan symbols and was originally a Celtic fertility symbol.

A trio of bench ends in All Saints Church, East Budleigh.

Is the figure on the left really depicting the punishment of a tale-bearer? It has been described as eating a banana!  

Why and when was the central bench end bearing the Raleigh arms defaced? Did the image of the ship really inspire young Walter Raleigh with his overseas exploration?

All Saints Church is celebrated for its 60 carved oak Tudor bench ends, dated 1537. Some of them raise interesting questions.  You can read in detail about them at

https://www.ova.org.uk/article/carved-bench-ends-all-saints-church-east-budleigh

The bench end pictured above possibly depicts a second ‘Green Man’ much admired by visitors. Writing his 2010 article for the Otter Valley Association, David Jenkinson described the carvers as influenced by the threatening mythical creatures of the Dark Ages, including such examples as the wodewose and boggarts or malevolent spirits of the fields.  

Others, like Budleigh Salterton’s eminent Dr T.N. Brushfield, in his 1892 study of the Church of All Saints, noted that the figure ‘bears some resemblance to, and has been called, the decorated head of an Indian.’

‘It’s hard not to think “Red Indian!” writes Hilary Bradt, the Devon-based founder of the Bradt Travel Guides, seeing the figure on the bench end as wearing what seems to be a feathered headdress.

‘A sailor returning from the New World would have remembered the more flamboyant aspects and perhaps described them to local craftsmen,’ she suggests.

‘But the “feathers” could also be foliage,’ she admits in deference to followers of the ‘Green Man’ theory.

Yettington resident Hanneke Coates, who contributed to a guide to All Saints Church, definitely shares the view that the bench end depicts a North American Indian.  ‘That of course is completely different from what the historians write,’ she told me. ‘But I’ve spent a long time studying and drawing the bench ends and I know them intimately.’

Whichever view you favour, they both seem appropriate against the background of the links currently being forged between Roger Conant’s home village of East Budleigh and the American community of Salem in Massachusetts that he founded. 

It's known today as the Witch City.

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