Malign Frequencies: Further Transmissions from Horsingdon, No.50: The Witches of Wealdstone Brook

Wealdstone Brook eventually feeds into the Trentford River, which runs parallel to the Ebury Way up to and beyond the village of Dedham. The Brook itself, marking through part of its journey the old parish boundary between Horsingdon and Harlow, has a doleful history associated with the region’s witchlore: suspected witches were once hanged from the bridge where the above photo was taken, allowing their fleeing, monstrous souls to be carried off by the Brook’s purifying current, so that those malign spirits might never again trouble the good people of Horsingdon.

The rationale behind this practice did, however, Reveal,itself to be flawed: one particular infamous witch trial in the January of 1752 saw twenty-three women hanged from the bridge in a single day; within a year, the three witch hunters who presided over that shocking tribunal were dead to a man - each of them later discovered to have mysteriously drowned at various locations along the sodden banks of Wealdstone Brook.