Mont Orgueil is a medieval castle perched on the eastern coast of Jersey with beautiful views out over the shimmering sea. On a good day, you might even catch a glimpse of France. But the view won’t have been much consolation to those who were imprisoned here – locked up for a year and a day back in the 16th and 17th centuries – because they were accused of witchcraft. Such was the hunger for trying witches here that historian William Monter has called the Channel Islands “the witch-hunting capital of Atlantic Europe”.
Jersey’s witchy history first caught the imagination of Carolyn Rose Ramsay when she worked as a tour guide on the island. A Canadian native and former dancer for major ballet companies in Europe and the Americas, Ramsay soaked up local myths such as the “witch ledge”, built on the side of chimneys so that anyone on a passing broomstick would rest there rather than come down your chimney. She visited Rocqueberg Point, known as Witches’ Rock, where you can supposedly see the footprints of dancing sorceresses. But then she came across the grimmer real-life history of the trials.
