POSTCARD FROM ESSEX

Bob Barton finds himself on the trail of witches and ghosts and stumbles upon fairytale characters in a model village with an unusual theme

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These days we tend to treat witches as a bit of joke. Children dressing up at Halloween; comical Ursula T in Disney's The Little Mermaid; the Wicked Witch of the West and so on. It wasn't always like that. While exploring St Osyth near Clactonon-Sea, I discovered being labelled a witch once meant a death sentence.

Remarkably unspoilt, St Osyth is a pretty village dominated by the ruins of a medieval priory. There are attractive houses, some weatherboarded and whitewashed, others decked with roses.

One structure stands out, though not for its looks. Its rather grim moniker is The Cage. It's said to be haunted, despite now being incorporated into a house. A hand-painted plaque near a bare wooden door declares: "Ursula Kemp was imprisoned here before being hanged as a witch in 1582."

In the volunteer-run St Osyth Museum (07973 523018, stosythmuseum.co.uk), I discovered. Ursula was the best-known victim of a big local witch-hunt between 158284. Among the museum's exhibits is a list of 20 people tried for witchcraft at Chelmsford. Their "crimes" included causing children to be struck with strange illnesses and making horses and pigs drop down dead. Some were even blamed when a neighbour's cream turned sour or their beer failed to brew. Another woman, Elizabeth Bennet, was executed for murdering four people through witchcraft.

Others, only marginally more fortunate, died in jail or were excommunicated. This was before the self-styled Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, started his purge of Essex witches.