Lower Well Head Farm / Tynedale Farm

Description: Both these working farms built in the Pendle Hill area

Era:

It is thought that Lower Well Head Farm was built in the 1500’s, while the building at Tynedale Farm was probably built in approximately 1750 although there was a house on the site dating far earlier.

History:

– These two farms, along with the surrounding area, were allegedly used as meeting places for the notorious Pendle Witches and their coven during the early seventeenth Century.

– The Pendle Coven was believed to have been responsible for the murder by witchcraft of seventeen people in and around the forest of Pendle.

– The Device family who were at the centre of the witchcraft charges lived at a place called Malkin Tower, thought to have been somewhere in the fields surrounding these two farms.

– On Good Friday 1612 an important meeting of the witches, thought to be a ‘Sabbat’, a major Wiccan festival, took place at Malkin and many of those who attended were later tried and hanged.
– It is widely considered that the coven collapsed because various witches incriminated each other and their families to the local magistrates. There was a particular feud between members of the Device family and their rivals, the Chattox’s.

– Elizabeth Sothernes, otherwise known as Old Demdike, confessed that the usual method of murder was to make an effigy of the intended victim, known as a ‘picture of clay’. It was then crumbled or burned over a period of time causing the victim to fall ill and die.

– Tynedale Farm is now owned by the Nutter family, descendents of Alice Nutter, one of the Pendle Witches executed in 1612.

– Little is known about the history of Lower Well head Farm, but it is believed to have previously been used as a morgue and the pathway adjacent to the farm is referred to as Corpse Way.

Ghost ratings:
– An apparition of a monk is frequently seen in the area surrounding Tynedale Farm

– A hooded figure has been seen kneeling by the road outside the farm

– A servant girl in a cloak has been witnessed flitting across the land between the two farms

Spooky experiences:

– A group of men out shooting reported to have spoken to a strange woman in a cloak and skullcap who later vanished.

– Footsteps are heard regularly upstairs at Lower Well Head Farm; in particular they are said to echo through the building at 6pm on Saturdays

First Broadcast : 26th April 2005 /3rd May 2005

Matt Barlow

A self confessed super fan of Most Haunted and editor of GhostMag.com. Matt’s passion for ghost hunting began when he moved into a haunted house in his second year of university in Leicester! His favourite location is the Niddry Street Vaults in Edinburgh.