The Image House in Cheshire was decorated with stone ‘voodoo dolls’ by its hate-filled builder
By Richard Holland
A permanent testament to the belief in witchcraft in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the British Isles can be found beside a country road in the tranquil English county of Cheshire.
Expert on the folklore of this north-western county, Christina Hole, records a story of a poacher who was found guilty of killing a gamekeeper in a fight. His sentence was to be transported out of Britain for eight years. Although the sentence was light for those days, presumably because there had been some provocation, the poacher considered it unjust. During the long years of his exile, he brooded on his supposed injustice and bitterness settled into his soul. He vowed revenge.
When he returned to England, he built himself a house on the outskirts of his home village of Bunbury, the scene of his disgrace. Clearly, he must have made some money while abroad, although he constructed the house under the old law of ‘jerry-building’, which permitted a man to claim land without purchase or lease, provided he could build some sort of a house in a single night and have the chimney smoking by sunrise.
Now his hatred of those people whom he believed had wronged him began to take shape. He modelled heads and figures of those he considered his enemies: the judge, the sheriff’s officers, the witnesses and others connected with his trial. Having made them and named them, he cursed them, pouring all his hatred into them – and then set them up on the walls of his house for all to see.
In effect, he had performed an elaborate form of ‘sympathetic magic’, similar to that carried out by the Coventry conjurors using wax dolls [see 'Coventry conjurors who cursed a king'). If he had performed this ancient form of supernatural revenge a century or so earlier, he would almost certainly have been arrested and burned at the stake, but in the more enlightened days of Georgian England, he escaped serious censure. Although his 'enemies' may have laughed him to scorn, it may also be true that, as Christina Hole puts it: ‘probably every misfortune that befell them throughout their lives was ascribed to the force of the images, both by the maker and by the majority of his neighbours'.
Over the years the poacher's cottage became known as ‘The Image House' and his stone ‘voodoo dolls' can still be seen. On the walls are two small figures and some clumsily fashioned heads. Unfortunately, when I visited the Image House in 2007, the afternoon sunlight was streaming from directly behind it, making photography difficult, so I also reproduce here the illustration from Christina Hole's ‘Traditions and Customs of Cheshire' published in 1937 (click on each image to enlarge it).
The Image House stands on the right-hand side of the A49 (if heading south to Whitchurch), just before the left-hand turn to Bunbury village and about 100 yards after a convenient layby. Please remember that if you wish to take a look at this weird survival of witchcraft, the cottage is a private home and its residents may not welcome people gawping outside their front gate.
[Sources: 'Traditions and Customs of Cheshire' (1937) p 14 and 'Witchcraft in England' (1945) p 37, both by Christina Hole.]
© Richard Holland 2008
