The Horsingdon Transmissions No.156: The Crooked Tree

On the lower slopes of Horsingdon Hill stands this lone remnant of a tree. In 1751, Abbie Carpender was hanged from it for the crime of witchcraft, and - as local legend has it - her body was buried in unhallowed ground at the foot of the tree. Not long after, the tree began to wither and die - on account, as some would have it, of feasting on the corrupt substance of Abbie Carpender's rotting and wretched corpse.

Yet despite such depredations the Crooked Tree continues, to this day, to look askance towards the the vast desolation of the Horsingdon firmament, as both defiant testimony and memorial to the marginalised and the disenfranchised of the district: those whose lives were hidden, or obscured, or forcibly snuffed out - and about which the dismal emptiness of space will forever preserve its impassive and indifferent silence.