19 October 2021 - 7:30 pm
19 October 2021 - 8:30 pm

“Hubble Bubble!”: Witchcraft in Worcestershire

Speaker: Douglas Smith

An early reminder that Hallowe’en is only a few days away. Douglas regales us with local stories of “real” Worcestershire witches. Fancy dress costume is not obligatory for this talk!

Douglas H Smith is a retired secondary school History teacher with over forty years of experience.  Since retirement he has spent more time on his love of history and has written three books and numerous booklets Cheer Boys it’s Hartlebury!, Whose For the Game? From Trams to Trenches, The Belbroughton Braves and Belbroughton School 1913-1919.
From an early age we are introduced to witches through numerous fairy tales from Hansel and Gretel to Rapunzel.  Then we have them in many stories such as The Witches, The Worst Witch, and the Harry Potter series.
Many of us take part in Halloween festivities and probably don’t give the witches a second thought, and yet they were only too real and threatening before the eighteenth century.  The Bible says that we ‘should not a witch to live!’  Then we have King James VI and I who published his Daemonologie in 1597 and then again in 1603 when he became King of England in which he stated why witches should be persecuted.
Douglas will lead us through the tangled web of the origins of witchcraft in Britain to its climax in the Seventeenth century with a particular focus on Worcestershire and the recorded instances of witchcraft in our county.
The talk is free to attend but registration is required in advance. Visit the Bromsgrove Society Website www.bsoc.co.uk and follow the link to register.

As the public health situation is still uncertain, the Society will continue to hold its local history meetings online via the Zoom platform, at least until the end of the year. We hope to return to the Methodist Centre from January 2022. Please check back here for details.