Witch
The Witch Under Puddingstone
A suspected witch went to her grave with a stone to hold her down.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- A village churchyard; the grave isn't marked
- Legend from
- 1662
- Tone
- Eerie
Coming up is Aldenham church, where in 1662 a suspected witch was buried with a lump of puddingstone on her coffin to stop her rising.
Hertfordshire puddingstone, a hard natural concrete of flint pebbles, was credited with protective powers: folk said it grew and bred new stones, and lumps were kept on doorsteps or in pockets against evil. Aldenham's parish records are said to tell how, in 1662, a woman suspected of witchcraft was buried with a piece of puddingstone laid on her coffin, to keep body and spirit in the grave because she was possessed by the Devil. Aldenham churchyard also shares a legend found in several Hertfordshire parishes, of a tree growing from the grave of a doubter of the afterlife as proof that he was wrong.