View of Long Compton village.

View of Long Compton village., a photo by ttwff on Flickr.

View of Long Compton village.
The village of Long Compton was once home to numerous witches.
On 15 September, 1875, the normally tranquil Warwickshire village of Long Compton was the scene of a bloody and bizarre street murder which sent shock waves through Victorian Britain.
The victim was 79-year-old Anne Tennant, the wife of an agricultural labourer, and her killing could hardly have been more public or more brazen. As she went to the local baker's shop to buy a loaf of bread for her husband's tea, a man stepped forward, thrust his pitchfork through her throat pinning her to the ground and then carved bloody crucifixes on her face and chest with a bill hook. Horrifying as the murder was, there was something especially terrifying about it for the local country people who understood the ancient superstitions which had gripped this isolated rural spot for more than 4,000 years.
The perpetrator was arrested only a short time after the alarm was raised and immediately admitted what he had done. In fact, he even claimed that his actions were to protect the community and that there were 16 other witches in the parish whom he would also like to kill. It comes as perhaps something of a shock to discover that several of his neighbours agreed with him. There was clearly a deep social schism at the time running through the community and fed by years of fear and suspicion.
The killer was James Hayward, a young man of weak intellect who had lived in the same street as the Tennants and their seven children for nearly 30 years. They both lived in the southern part of Long Compton which to this very day is known as the 'Witch End' of the village because of the number of witches who lived there. When an inquest was held in the Red Lion two days after the incident, the jury returned a verdict of 'wilful murder' and he was committed for trial at Warwick Assizes.
The case was heard the following December when, as part of his defence, Hayward asked the judge to weigh the dead woman's body against the church Bible, a traditional way of determining the existence of a witch. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, was detained at Warwick Gaol at Her Majesty's pleasure and starved himself to death a few months later.
The tragedy was one of the more extreme incidents involving witchcraft which occurred in Long Compton over a period of several hundred years and which continued well into the 20th century. The tradition stemmed from superstitions surrounding the Rollright Stones, an ancient stone circle situated a mile away just over the border in Oxfordshire.
The Macmillan Way. long-distance footpath. England.