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
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.
