Boscastle and the Museum of Witchcraft

 Cornwall, England

I just love Cornwall, its cute villages built into the crevices of the coastline, buildings perched on top of cliffs, long, narrow, winding streets leading down to the harbour, the hub of village life.  I love the buildings too, often higgledy, piggledy one wonders about town planning sometimes and driving around them is a nightmare  but who cares, they are just wonderful.

Boscastle is on the west coast of Cornwall and it is accessed by a narrow, windy road as are most of the coastal towns.  We drove into the well managed parking area and walked down towards the village.  What wonderful old buildings planted here and there with no obvious pattern to them, a big stream running right through the middle of the town divided it in two although most of the shops and café’s were on the northern side of the stream.

 I just loved the roof lines of some of the buildings, they were rather saggy but interesting, certainly they added character and made me wonder how sound they were but it didn’t rain upon us when we were inside them so they must be fine.  We wandered around the village going in and out of galleries and shops and then we came to the Museum of Witchcraft, my  reason for being in Boscastle, a fellow astrologer had tipped me off as to its whereabouts and I am so glad she did. 

Witchcraft conjures up visions of old hags with warts on their noses but there were many people who practiced witchcraft and some who simply used herbs and spiritual intent in order to heal others.    Witchcraft was feared and blamed for anything that went wrong, witches tried and put to death, often in catch 22 situations such as dunking a prospective witch in water, if she was a witch she would not drown, if she was not a witch she would drown.  I wonder where the purveyors of these laws got their strange ideas and how many innocent people died as a result.  The Museum of Witchcraft is dedicated to those innocents.  The  last witch trial was held in 1712 in England and the anti witchcraft laws were repealed in 1735/6.

There was a clearly marked place by the door for parking your broom  but bicycles, it seems, can be left anywhere

The museum was crammed full of artefacts of the “craft”  There were poppets (like voodoo dolls) complete with the history of the spells associated with them, there were demons, amulets,  bits of dead chickens, potions and spells, some were white magic some were not and some gave me the creeps but it was all so fascinating.  This Museum of Witchcraft houses the biggest  collection of witchcraft accoutrements in the world, whether you are a believer or not it is an interesting place to visit. 

There is a lot of information on witchcraft here as well as legends and stories of local witches but the artefacts have been donated from many places and have come from private collections too.

We walked down to the harbour and the weather took a turn for the worst.  My friend Jan almost did a Mary Poppins impression, flying off the edge of the harbour with her umbrella until it turned inside out in the howling wind.  That’s Cornwall for you, but even at its most wild and woolly it is still interesting, the grey clouds and wild weather kind of make it all the more ominous. 

Down on the Harbour looking back towards Boscastle Village

The Museum of Witchcraft is well visited and not difficult to find, there is more information and some pictures on their web site. © 2009

Make a wish, cast a spell.  In Cornwall it was common to use clouties to send good wishes or to make a wish for something.  A cloutie is a ribbon or piece of cloth which is obtained from a witch for the purpose of bringing about anything you desire.The Cloutie is tried to a tree and it is said when the cloutie (cloth) rots your wish will come true. 

This story extracted from Where is Hazel.com

Hazel Leung