The Newcastle Witch Trials took place from 1649 to 1650,
ending when 15 women and 1 man were executed on Newcastle’s town moor for Witchcraft on the 21st of August in 1650.
The most important thing about the podcast are the innocent people who were killed. We try to discover who they were, why they would be accused of witchcraft, and why this horrible crime happened in Newcastle. Beyond the historical facts, we also draw parallels to modern day witch trials and witch hunts, which is a little frightening, but I think really important to raise these issues. Witch trials aren’t a thing of the past, they still happen today in 2022.
You can find out more about the podcast on NARC, BBC Sounds and The Chronicle.
The podcasts features several expert guests, such as Prof. Diane Purkiss, Prof. Marion Gibson, Prof. Alec Ryrie, Dr. Jo Bath, Dr. Tabitha Stanmore, David Silk from Newcastle Castle and Katie Liddane.
“I think listeners are going to be surprised by some of the information we share on the podcast. It isn’t a typical story about witchcraft - over the course of the podcast we unpick a lot of the civil, socio-political and religious factors that created the witches in Newcastle and condemned them to death. ”
How the podcast began
In 2015 we were filming The Humanities Festival for Northumbria University when Dr. Claire Nally, a lecturer at Northumbria University gave a lecture called ‘Wild and Wicked Women: Newcastle’s Witch Trials’. Since then, there’s been an ambition to tell this story and find out more about why the Newcastle Witch Trials happened and who were the accused witches. The team spent numerous months reading and researching, and conducting preliminary interviews with experts, and slowly the podcast began to take shape.
Why we made this podcast
The more we researched, the more we understood the importance of telling this story. We discussed making a documentary about it, but getting a broadcaster on board takes time and can be a convoluted process.
As Candle & Bell produces podcasts, we thought it best to tell the story as a podcast first. It means we can share this story directly with our audience and they don’t need to pay or subscribe to a streaming service or broadcaster - it’s entirely free to access anywhere in the world.