Around the year 948, in a village on the edge of what is now Peterborough, a widow and her son were accused of driving iron pins into a man named Aelfsige.
The case survives because King Edgar later granted the land at Ailsworth to Aelfsige’s son, and the charter explains why the previous owners had forfeited it. The instrument of harm was hauled out of the widow’s chamber and shown to everyone. She was taken to London Bridge and drowned. Her son ran, and lived out his life as an outlaw.
Historians still argue over what happened. Most read it as effigy magic, pins driven into an image of a man in the hope of injuring the man himself, which would make Ailsworth the only named case of its kind from Anglo-Saxon England. Others think the pins may have been a real assault with a real iron bar. What is not in doubt is the drowning, which has the look of trial by water, the ordeal that would later become the classic test for a witch.
Neither the widow nor her son is named anywhere. The land, however, is still there.
Where: Ailsworth, west of the city, next door to Castor.
