A true story of 400 years ago told by Noël Johnson with Rosalind Adams Michael Tudor Barnes Douglas Blackwell Pauline Letts
Katherine Parr and Patience Tomlinson
On 19 February 1582, a middle-aged woman,
Ursula Kemp , faced her accusers in an improvised courtroom in the village of St Osyth on the Essex marshes. She was alleged to have practised witchcraft. When eventually the hearings ended, several other women had also been accused. They were all sent for trial at
Chelmsford Assizes and two of them were subsequently hanged. This account by Anthony Harris is based on transcripts of the original hearings and other published contemporary sources. Producer
ALAN HAYDOCK