School Report about Witch Marks in Stradbroke by Nuala Duffy
Title
School Report about Witch Marks in Stradbroke by Nuala Duffy
Description
"My name is Nuala Duffy and I go to the primary school in the village. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the school was closed to my year group, and others, so I was home schooled by my mum and dad.
As part of my history lessons, I did a local history project about witches. This presentation is the result of my local history project.
I learnt about a woman from Stradbroke who was executed for being a witch in 1599 (although she wasn’t!). Her name was Doll Barthram and she was accused of being a witch by Joan Jorden, who worked for Simon Fox of Battlesea Hall (previously The Rookery), for “refusing to give away her master’s goods”. In 1599 the law stated that you would only be executed for being a witch if you had killed someone using witchcraft. It wasn’t until 1604 that you could be executed for witchcraft without actually killing someone, you just needed to cause injury. The report after the execution says that Joan accused Doll of killing her but wasn’t killed. Was this enough to get an innocent woman hanged?
After learning about Doll I visited the Fox family tomb in the churchyard in Stradbroke.
I then went on to study the witch trials of the 1600’s in East Anglia, led by the witch finder general Matthew Hopkins, and looking at anti-witch marks in buildings in Stradbroke."
As part of my history lessons, I did a local history project about witches. This presentation is the result of my local history project.
I learnt about a woman from Stradbroke who was executed for being a witch in 1599 (although she wasn’t!). Her name was Doll Barthram and she was accused of being a witch by Joan Jorden, who worked for Simon Fox of Battlesea Hall (previously The Rookery), for “refusing to give away her master’s goods”. In 1599 the law stated that you would only be executed for being a witch if you had killed someone using witchcraft. It wasn’t until 1604 that you could be executed for witchcraft without actually killing someone, you just needed to cause injury. The report after the execution says that Joan accused Doll of killing her but wasn’t killed. Was this enough to get an innocent woman hanged?
After learning about Doll I visited the Fox family tomb in the churchyard in Stradbroke.
I then went on to study the witch trials of the 1600’s in East Anglia, led by the witch finder general Matthew Hopkins, and looking at anti-witch marks in buildings in Stradbroke."
Date
June 2020
Contributor
Nuala Duffy
Rights
Stradbroke Village Archive Creative Commons Licence is Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivs - CC BY-NC-ND http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Embed
Copy the code below into your web page
Document Viewer
Collection
Citation
“School Report about Witch Marks in Stradbroke by Nuala Duffy,” Stradbroke Village Archive, accessed April 18, 2026, http://stradbrokearchive.org.uk/items/show/1195.
Tell us more about this item