HALLOWEEN TALES IN ESSEX

Today is All Hallow's Eve in our town. Already the pumpkins are sitting alongside furry spiders, black paper-crepe weirdy-looking witches are sprawled among yards of white guaze as the witching hour approaches.  Children dressed as witches and wizards, devils and imps are preparing to perform their tricking and treating appearances - all fun during this strange time of the year.    

But as we all know, witchcraft was no laughing matter a few hundred years ago in England.   Mere suspicion that someone was dabbling in the black arts could mean a death sentence. Medieval folk had long suspected that the Devil was carrying out his evil work on earth with the help of his minions. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII declared this to be the truth in his Papal Bull. This kicked off the big European Witch Craze, which lasted for nearly two centuries.

 

The hotbeds of the witch-hunts were the German-speaking lands, France and Scotland.  In 1645 England, notably Essex, was in the grip of witch-fever. Between 1560 and 1680 in Essex alone 317 women and 23 men were tried for witchcraft, and over 100 were hanged. In 1645 there were 36 witch trials in Essex. Some of them were held at Brentwood. At least half a dozen Brentwood women around 1575 were hanged, so the records tell us. All appeared to be old, lived alone, except for their companion cats.
 

Brentwood Assizes  (which used to be in the High Street) were where the trials took place. The three-gabled Assize House had been built under a deed of 1579 and sited where 84 High Street is now. Judicial luminaries such as the celebrated Chief Justice Parker became associated with Brentwood Assizes. The infamous Matthews Hopkins – known as the Witchfinder General – who tyrannised the Eastern Counties during his two-year search for witches - was known to have visited Brentwood. 
 

Trials were held here for local felons, some of whom received death sentences.  South Weald registers tell of seven people who had been hanged and were buried on the same day.  These heartless events often attracted huge audiences.  The condemned were taken by cart along the Ongar Road to Gallows Green, a point close to the triangle leading to Doddinghurst Road where the unfortunates met their end. In past centuries phantoms have been recorded around Gallows Green (shown on the 1777 Andre & Chapman map) but these days, the constant traffic flow would undoubtedly frighten them off.

CELEBRATING BRENTWOOD WRITERS' CIRCLE WITH AN INSPIRATIONAL AUTHOR

 Hardly seems any time at all since I began blogging in 2006. Now the blogging world has rapidly expanded and I'm pleased that my earliest readers are still with me. Obviously, many share my passion for reading (join me on Book Club @ PhoenixFM with Presenter Michelle Ward) and writing - that continues non-stop.  Have some interesting commissions coming up, both in book form and features - watch this space!

Today, the Brentwood Writers' Circle enthusiasts gather monthly at our regular venue at the Bardswell Social Club in Weald Road, Brentwood. At our last gathering in October was a great all-day event with a gorgeous lunch and a chance to meet Ian Ayris who was a great speaker and contributes a regular column with The Writing Magazine.You can learn more about Ian on the PhoenixFM website.

 PM

OFF WE GO TO HALLOWEEN PARTIES

 

HALLOWEEN FUN - THAT TIME AGAIN!

As a gardener, we are not surrounded by pumpkins this year, but still enough to do a little carving and I have a beautiful little pumpkin grown by Sally Kent which will soon end up in a delicious pie.

Our local Barleylands Farm Shop at Great Burstead is a wonderful fairyland of pumpkins, huge specimens, all ready to carve out some fabulous faces.

Currently, the kitchen is full of onions, apples and other locally picked fruit and veg for my preserving pan and I'm using my own recipes (which were published in The Telegraph book). I don't use pumpkin for my home-made wines - have tried it many years ago, but hardly worth the work involved. Maybe some of my readers have had more success? Do let me know? 

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY ARCHIVE GATHERING AT SATURDAY'S BILLERICAY LIBRARY

This special annual Saturday in October is always fun and a chance to meet other local folk connected with our very special little Essex town. 

I especially enjoyed learning more about the latest acquisitions from the Essex Record Office via Vicky who gave a fascinating talk about the founding of the ERO, with spectacular documents dating from one thousand years ago. We enjoyed some great talks from local history enthusiasts, particularly from one of our own members linked to the history of our sister town of Billerica in Massachusetts US. It was a fascinating day and we learned so much about Billericay's past. 

Vicky (ERO) Val (Family History) & Brian Hughes Author & BCA

  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAUREEN DUFFY

 

Wishing Maureen Duffy FKC,  President of the Authors' Licensing Collecting Society a very happy 90th birthday on Saturday. With thanks for all you have achieved for writers and poets. 

Maureen Duffy FKC (English,1956) is the author of more than 30 published works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays. She graduated in English from King’s in 1956 and became a Fellow of the College in 2002.

LOOKING FORWARD TO SATURDAY'S HISTORY FAIR AT BILLERICAY LIBRARY

We are all looking forward to this year's Billericay Community Archive History day on Saturday (10.00am-3pm). It will be a pleasure to help folk learn more about our town and its past.  Local family history assistance is available and there will be photographs and displays around Billericay Library, as well as talks by local historians and knowledgeable members of Essex Record Office. A warm welcome awaits.   
 

SOON TO VISIT DODIE SMITH'S FORMER HOME IN FINCHINGFIELD, ESSEX

Dodie Smith was once best known in the United States for her children's book The Hundred and One Dalmatians, which inspired an animated film from Disney -- and, later, the live-action movie starring Glenn Close. Her other major work, the 1948 novel I Capture the Castle, was out of print here for many years (though it has always had a following in Britain). But with the book's 1998 reissue, and the 2003 release of a film version from BBC Films, modern readers are rediscovering Dodie Smith.

As a young woman, Dodie's ambition was to be an actress, and she enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Art (later the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) with hopes of going on the stage. But at five feet tall, she was "too short and not attractive enough," in her own words, so she gave up acting and took a job at Heal's in London, where she became the store's toy buyer. However, the theatre was always at the back of her mind and in 1929 she wrote avery successful play, Autumn Crocus, followingthis with a number of other successful plays, including Dear Octopus, which starred John Gielgud.

During World War II, Dodie and her husband, Alec Beesley, moved to America to avoid the British draft. She wrote screenplays for Paramount and formed "great friendships" with other writers, including Christopher Isherwood. Although she missed her home, the couple stayed in America for many years after the war ended -- they didn't want to put their Dalmatian dogs through the six months' quarantine that was then required to bring pets into England.

Homesickness helped inspire Dodie's first novel, I Capture the Castle, which evokes a peculiarly English version of genteel poverty. The 17-year-old narrator and her family, who live in a dilapidated house built onto a ruined castle, belong to "that odd class of intelligent and cultured people who are also unskilled and unemployable," as Salon writer Charles Taylor put it. From its much-quoted opening sentence ("I write this sitting in the kitchen sink") to its bittersweet ending, Smith's witty coming-of-age tale has captivated adolescent and adult readers alike. Writers from J. K. Rowling and Susan Isaacs to Armistead Maupin and Erica Jong have praised it for the merits Penelope Lively summed up as "a good story, flourishing characters."

Dodie's other well-known work, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, was published in 1958 and is now considered a classic work of children's literature, though not all fans of Disney's 101 Dalmatians realize that the movie was based on a book. (Dodie's sequel to Dalmatians, a fantasy titled The Starlight Barking, bears no resemblance to the Disney film sequel 102 Dalmatians). Towards the end of her life, Dodie produced four volumes of autobiography: Look Back with Love: A Manchester Childhood, Look Back with Mixed Feelings, Look Back with Astonishment and Look Back with Gratitude.

A few of the author's plays are still produced occasionally, but she remains best known for I Capture the Castle and The Hundred and One Dalmatians. As Sue Summers pointed out in The Guardian, "Two prose classics in one lifetime is more than most writers achieve."

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS FOR MY FAVOURITE ACTOR - GLYNIS JOHNS

GLYNIS JOHNS (ONE OF MY FAVOURITE FILM ACTORS CELEBRATING HER ONE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY - GLYNIS' LIFE STORY IS A FABULOUS ROMP

Lovely to hear the voice of of one of my favourite film actors Glynis Johns, who celebrated her 100th birthday on 5 October.  I met Glynis in London in the late 1950s and have now mentioned her in my new book. She was born in South Africa to another favourite actor of mine, her father Mervyn Johns and classical concert pianist Alys Maude Steele-Payne. 

"I've been working at something ever since I was born!" she mentioned in the new video (credit ABC 7) referring to her early start as a child star. Johns quickly established a persona in light comedy roles as a wide-eyed, slightly ditzy performer with big eyes, an abundance of blonde hair, and a husky voice with a plummy accent, all of which she displayed in more than 60 films from 1938 to 1999, including State Secret and Mad About Men. Glynis was Oscar nominated in 1960 for The Sundowners, and is now the oldest Oscar nominee currently living. A Tony winner, she made her Broadway debut in 1952, and appeared on the New York stage in Gertie, Major Barbara, Too True to Be Good, and The Circle in addition to A Little Night Music. In A Little Night Music, which awarded Johns her Tony, she introduced the Sondheim classic "Send In The Clowns". Said Johns of the song, "I got applause for that. I loved doing it, I felt it."   Glynis now lives in Los Angeles.