Playing with Witches

 On Wednesday I went out with a friend to take some images for use by Pendle Borough Council.

Our first port of call was the new Alice Nutter sculpture in Roughlee.  Alice Nutter was convicted and hung for being part of a covern of witches in the Pendle area.  In total 10 people from the area were taken to Lancaster tried and then hung.  Another, from Gisburn was taken to York and executed there.

Alice was unusual in the group as she was the widow of a wealthy farmer and it is often thought that she may have been convicted due to the jealousies of other local people.  The entire group were convicted on the evidence of a nine-year old witness named Jennet Device who mas made to stand on a table in front of a packed court room.

 After we were done with the sculpture we headed up in to the fields to capture some images of the landscape.  From this position we were able to get some nice pictures of both Pendle and Blacko.  It was a lovely hour and a bit, with warm sunshine in a beautiful part of the country.

Nice surprises

One thing I love about being a photographer is the nice little surprises.  These surprises come in different forms.  Sometimes its when you process an image that you thought wasn't very good suddenly becomes stunning or sometimes its just those little moments of beauty that are generally missed.  One I had last week.

I was out walking and looked in to a field because something didn't look quite right.  Led there was a fox.  The little fella hung around for ages.  In fact, I got my tripod out and sat the camera on it and he quite happily let me take photographs of him for about 30 minutes or so!

The image (left) was taken at one of my favourite places, Castercliffe Hill Fort.  The three hawthorns reminded me of three witches and so that has become the title of the image!  Quite apt really!  This year is the 400th anniversary of the Pendle Witch Trail.