WitchLegendary
The Long Marston Ducking
A mob dragged an old couple to the pond, convinced they were witches.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- The village; the pond itself is lost
- Legend from
- 1751
- Tone
- Dark history
You're coming into Long Marston, where in 1751 a mob drowned an old woman in the village pond, convinced she was a witch.
In 1751, long after witchcraft had ceased to be a crime, an elderly Tring couple, Ruth and John Osborne, were accused of bewitching a Gubblecote farmer's calves after Ruth was refused buttermilk. Town criers in Hemel Hempstead and other markets announced a public ducking. Parish officers hid the pair in Tring church, but a huge mob wrecked the workhouse, found them and dragged them to the pond at Long Marston. Wrapped in sheets with thumbs tied to toes, they were thrown in, and Ruth was pushed about with a stick until she died. A chimney sweep, Thomas Colley, was hanged for her murder and gibbeted nearby at Gubblecote Cross.