The Witch of Wookey Hole: Petrified for All Time

A casual browse of Google Trends shows public interest in witches has remained pretty steady for the past five years, with peaks around Halloween every year.

But witches don’t have to remain something you encounter in fancy dress, or as part of an Instagram hashtag. If you venture to Wookey Hole in Somerset, you can encounter a witch face to face!

You won’t have to worry about your safety, either. After all, this witch was apparently petrified by a monk many years ago. There’s even a stalagmite that looks like a stereotypical witch in profile!

The River Axe created the Wookey Hole caves over millions of years. It’s also been a site of human occupation since the Stone Age. So how did the legend of the witch become tied with the caves? And is there any truth in the story? Let’s find out!

Who was the Witch of Wookey Hole then?

In one version of the legend, the witch lived in the caves. The Wookey Hole website says this was 1000 years ago (Wookey Hole Caves 2022). A goat and her kid were the witch’s familiars. In earlier years, she’d been crossed in love, and she’d developed an all-consuming hatred of happy couples. She cast curses on the villagers of Wookey from her home in the caves (Reader’s Digest 1973: 167).

Eventually, the people grew tired of her and appealed to the Abbot of Glastonbury. Surely he could rid them of this witch?

The Abbot sent a monk to the caves. The witch threw spell after spell at the monk, but she couldn’t penetrate his air of goodness. He sprinkled her with holy water as she tried to leave the caves, and she turned to stone. This explains why one of the rock formations in the first chamber is known as the Witch.

I remember when I went as a child, the tour guide pointed out a small misshapen stalagmite on the floor near the Witch, explaining it was her dog, forever petrified at her feet. I found that desperately sad and said ‘sorry’ as we passed! Apparently, bones were once found on the cave floor around the ‘dog’. Some think that people brought dog bones in the past to try and appease the witch (Winsham 2014).

Other Versions

In one version of the story, a man from nearby Glastonbury had gotten engaged to a young woman from Wookey. The witch, having been jilted in the past, cursed the romance and it fell apart. The man became a monk and stalked the witch, seeking revenge. He blessed one of the rivers in the cave and sprinkled it around the cave, splashing the witch who hid in the shadows. She turned to stone where she stood.

In another version of the legend, the Abbot of Glastonbury appointed Father Bernard to exorcise the witch. By all accounts, he had much experience in such matters. Some stories claim she was just an old woman who lived in the cave, blamed for everything that went wrong by the locals, but others say she was a witch who tormented the villagers. They did battle in the cave, but ultimately, Father Bernard’s divine authority won the day, and the Witch was petrified in the cave. In some versions of the story, he did this with his Latin invocations alone, and in others, he threw blessed water over her.

How old is the story?

The Witch of Wookey Hole was first mentioned in 1480 by William of Worcester (Westwood 2005: 656). According to him, people called a rock at the entrance of the caves ‘the Porter’. Visitors needed to ask the Porter for permission to enter the hall of Wookey. He also noted a well in an inner cave that no one could tell how deep it was. At the time, people believed it to be a holy well (Westwood 2005: 656).

The witch wasn’t always described as one. Worcester talked about a stalagmite in the cave’s first chamber. To him, this represented a woman spinning with a drop spindle. There was no mention of her being a witch (Westwood 2005: 656).

Thomas Scott Holmes in The History of the Parish and Manor of Wookey traces the legend to 1612, although this is only a passing reference.

Also, while it’s nothing to do with the legend, I just want to mention the name. One theory proposes that ‘Wookey’ comes from the Celtic word for cave, ‘Ogof’. ‘Hole’ is apparently an Anglo-Saxon term for cave, so following this logic, Wookey Hole Cave means Cave Cave Cave (Witcombe 2009: 202).

‘The Witch of Wokey’

We have to move into the 18th century to find the real fixation on the legend. Dr. Henry Harington wrote the poem ‘The Witch of Wokey’ in 1748, published in 1756. Harington describes her as being a hag so ugly she couldn’t get a lover. He apparently took his inspiration from the local legend.

“Her haggard face was foull to see;
Her mouth unmeet a mouth to bee;
Her eyen of deadly leer.
She nought devis’d but neighbour’s ill,
She wreak’d on all her wayward will,
And marr’d all goodly chear

All in her prime, have poets sung,
No gaudy youth, galant and young,
E’er blest her longing arms;
And hence arose her spight to vex,
And blast the youth of either sex,
By dint of hellish charms.”

(Reid 1999: 113)

In the poem, a ‘learned wight’ turns her to stone, sent from Glastonbury to deal with her. The poem, typically for its time, blames frustrated womanhood as if it was her loneliness and inability to find a partner that led to her cursing happy young couples.

There are even suggestions by Nicholas Reid that Wookey Hole inspired Coleridge for his Kubla Khan work (1999: 113).

Is there any actual evidence of a witch at Wookey Hole?

Some cite Herbert Balch’s discovery in 1912 of an apparent burial site. It was considered to be that of a witch “in a layer associated with coins from the very late fourth century” (Hutton 2011: 6). Other finds from the site included goat bones, a black bowl, a polished stalagmite ball, a comb, and a brooch. An iron sickle, human bones, and a knife lay in a pit beneath the site. While it sounds like exciting proof that the witch existed, Ronald Hutton notes that the consensus now is that these finds weren’t a single deposit and weren’t related (2011: 6).

The remains of the ‘witch’ are on display at the Wells & Mendip Museum in Wells, Somerset. It’s worth noting that analysis reveals most of the bones belonged to a man between 25 and 35 (Somerset Historic Environment Record 2012).

Have you spotted the problem with that story yet? Yep. It would be pretty difficult to find the witch’s bones if she’s been turned into a stalagmite elsewhere in the cave. You can find her in the Witch’s Kitchen cavern.

Thing is, the burial site is also not that special when you take the Wookey Hole Cemetery into account. This is the fourth chamber in the cave system, and people have found bones from between 20 and 30 people buried there. It’s believed to have been in use for the local Romano-British community (Raven 2019). There’s plenty of evidence that people lived in the area between the Iron Age and the Roman occupation of Britain.

In 2017, staff found witch marks carved into the walls at Wookey Hole while creating a caving experience (BBC 2017). The marks dated between 1550 and 1750, and until the discovery of marks at Creswell Crags in 2019, they were the largest concentration of protective marks in a British cave. But look at the time difference between the age of the skeleton and the marks on the walls. It’s unlikely the marks warded off the ‘witch’ found in 1912.

What do we make of it all?

There’s nothing to say there wasn’t a Witch of Wookey Hole. Given the history of people living in the caves, it’s entirely possible there have been people there that some may have thought were witches. I can’t help wondering though if, over time, people conflated stories of those living in the caves with tales of stalagmites that look like figures.

That said, the Witch isn’t the only legend in Wookey Hole. There was also a legend of a conger eel, around 30ft long, that lives in the caves. Many centuries ago, this eel wanted to be king of the river. He swam up the Severn, but he ruined the salmon nets and flooded the surrounding countryside. The furious fishermen drove him back and they forced him into the narrow River Axe. He managed to get into Wookey Hole, but he couldn’t get back out, and he’s still stuck there (Reader’s Digest 1973: 167).

I don’t know about you, but a 30ft ancient conger eel is a lot more terrifying than a witch!

Do you believe the Witch of Wookey Hole was real? Let me know below!

References

BBC (2017), ‘More witch markings found at Wookey Hole’, BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-40262004.

Hutton, Ronald (2011), ‘Romano-British Reuse of Prehistoric Ritual Sites’, Britannia, 42, pp. 1–22.

Raven, Gwion (2019), ‘The Witch of Wookey Hole’, Patheos, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thewitchesnextdoor/2019/01/real-witch-of-wookey-hole/.

Reader’s Digest (1973), Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, London: Reader’s Digest Association.

Reid, Nicholas (1999), ‘“Kubla Khan” and Harington’s “The Witch of Wokey”’, The Wordsworth Circle, 30 (2), pp. 112–113.

Somerset Historic Environment Record (2012), ‘Wookey Hole cave, Wookey Hole’, Heritage Gateway, https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=24355&resourceID=100.

Westwood, Jennifer and Simpson, Jacqueline (2005), The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends, London: Penguin.

Winsham, Willow (2014), ‘Lingering Legends: The Witch of Wookey Hole’, The Witch, The Weird, and The Wonderful, http://winsham.blogspot.com/2014/11/lingering-legends-witch-of-wookey-hole.html?m=1.

Witcombe, Richard (2009), Who was Aveline anyway?: Mendip’s Cave Names Explained, 2nd edition, Priddy: Wessex Cave Club.