Charlton House, three miles from Evesham, was formerly the property of the Dineley family, and saw the commencement of the bitter family fued between Sir John Dineley Goodere and his...                                  

The Rev. W.H. Shawcross of Bretforton gave this recipe;..

These sometimes have strange names in the Vale of Evesham. Spot Loggins is a local name...

Mrs. l. M. Hopkins, who lived at Prior's Court, Callow End, 9March 1956), asked a Valuation Court that her rates be reduced because a ghost known as the Grey Lady is causing staff trouble...

A contemporary account (January 1899) goes as follows:

'At Cropthorne, a beautiful place stands vacant because successive owners have found it impossible to keep servants there. A booted something enters at the front door, crosses the hall, ascends...

Longfellow, who was saturated in thought and sentiment of New England, wrote: ...

Folk lore gives insight into generations of our ancestors, including forgotten religious rites long abandoned, and before the nature of diseases was understood, most believed in herbs and charms...

The mandrake plant has from the earliest times been associated with magical powers. It was believed that this 'semi-human' plant shrieked when pulled from the ground, a belief recorded by William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet;

'And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, that living mortals, hearing them, run mad'.

About 1647, Mr. Rowland Barlett's house at Castlemorton was plundered during his absence at Ledbury Fair, and among the money, plate and jewels they carried away was a 'cock-eagle stone', a variety of ergillaceous oxide of iron, then much valued by phsicians on...

At Pebworth, about 1850, there was a White Witch, who had the power of curing by incantation. She is remembered for two cures, one for ....

In the mid-19th century, half the inhabitants of Britain believed in witches, especailly in remote rural areas, but even in the Industrial Black Country many still...

The ability of a witch to turn herself into another creature is told in the story of the hunting of Dame Cofield of Leigh. John Spooner of Hopton Court, Leigh, kept a pack of hounds, which....

The difference in the practice of charms and of curses is shown in two notable Honeybourne characters. The beneficient activities of the White Witch were mainly in the... 

'Witchfinders' were long on the public payroll. Undoubtedly, torture of one sort or another was used sort or another..

'Walk out across the marsh when the water is out and the twilight falling and the wind leaping through the red boughs of the willow, and the rooks flying homeward through  the drifting rain, see the watery shaft of sunlight gleam on the flooded meadows, and the broad foundation of the rainbow spring from the veiled and distant hills - faeryland does not..

Edward C. Corbett was a solicitor who gave up his practice to travel rough around the world. He had a flair for languages and in the period after the 1914-18 War travelled as a overseas representative for Lea & Perrins promoting Worcestershire Sauce. At a time when ..

Folklore is the study of beliefs and practices once firmly held. Few now believe in charms, in giants and fairies, but less than a century ago people in lonely places believed in them In Worcestershire and 

Noake tells of an early Victorian faith healer, a labouring man of Stoke Prior, practising the art of healing 'by a charm', cases of thrush in children. He would put his finger into his own mouth and then into the child's, rubbing the gums and mumbling something ending with 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost', then set the child down....

Belief in charms survived well into the present century, especially for the cure of mysterious troubles that poultices and physic did not seem to touch, such as warts, skin diseases and fits. The charmer blew three times round the head of the patient, made mystic passes with his hands over the part afflicted and repeated an incantation in a low mumbling voice with the express intention that the words should not be understood....

Until the coming of the motor-car there were many villages in Worcestershire hidden away among wooded hills where life went on seemingly unchanged, as it had done for centuries. They were insignificant, out-of-the-world little places, inhabited by quaint old-fashioned folk, whose manners and customs were traditional and superstitious........

Long before Christianity, the Celts worshipped at curiously shaped rocks, not in temples, but in the open air, and on hill-tops. These stones were believed to have magical properties, and on Bredon Hill two groups of stones, of great antiquity, were used for religious and super superstitious purposes..........

Folklore is the study of beliefs and practices once firmly held. Few now believe in charms, in giants and fairies, but less than a century ago people in lonely places believed in them....

Mrs Cartwright of Stourbridge bewitched led to Court hearing

The Power of a witch to bring wagons to a halt was told by Edward Corbett in one of his local fairy tales. Two old women, who lived in Salt Lane (Castle St),