Many times have I asked myself why does the witch seem to be more prevalent in Essex than it does in the further lands. Walking down every road I see swarms of them, cackling, groping, eating, displays of such grotesquery I find it unbelievable that there is not more screaming within these towns. Not even our pubs are safe anymore, where witches can often be found behind the bar, their vile hands touching the very glasses that we are expected to drink from.
Much talk has been made of the fact that if you draw a pentagram across the map of our isles one point will be poking its way into the Essex heartlands, but I believe this to be unlikely. The Essex Witches, having survived purges and burnings, remain undiminished, and one has to ask the question: “Why?”.
I believe the answer lies in the breeding marshes of the Dengie. This rich fertile mud, corrupted by the salt and the filth from the bloodsoaked waters of the Blackwater. Fed by the immortalised Saxon carcasses of the Battle of Maldon, their flesh degrading eternally yet always replenished, these perverted fields, which once gave birth to barley, now abort their twisted daughters out into the world, there to shamble into our towns, our houses, and even our sheds.
This is an excerpt from the controversial 1953 essay “Witch Heaven: Maldon, Mundon, and The Breeding Mudmarsh Between” by Peter Hedgecock, a noted local historian, farmer. Unmarried, he was most famous for his help in the revival of stocks of the Essex Pig.
