ANGUSalive’s Annual Report 2022/23: Museums, Galleries & Archives Case Study
ANGUSalive’s Annual Report 2022/23 takes a look at a fascinating story about the Forfar Witches Story!
In Angus, we have a rich heritage of stories and storytelling, but few stories go as deep at the tale of the Forfar Witches.
The Forfar Witch Trials took place between 1661-1663 and involved 42 of the town’s people who were imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of witchcraft. 22 women were found guilty and subsequently executed over a 3-year period.
As part of a funded project with Museums Galleries Scotland, Angus Archives received funding for £4,760 which paid for a revision and reprint of the 1995 book “The Forfar Witches Story”, which also provided additional Creative Learning Assistant resource hours to research and produce a new guided walk of Forfar, using the original documents in the collections.
The book itself is fascinating as it looks in great detail about what “made a woman a witch”, who they were – including Helen Guthrie, the last woman suspected of being a witch to be executed in Forfar. It unveils how influential she was to the cases too, given that of the 42 suspects, Guthrie accused nearly 30 of them.
It also includes information on confessions given at the time, which were often obtained against a background of torture and deprivation.
To dive deeper into the roots of the story, the new heritage walk traced attendees through the streets of Forfar to some of the places connected with this period whilst looking into the details of the accused witches.
Four of the walks were hosted in September and October 2022 which were well attended which finished in the Meffan Museum, where a demountable museum case had been featured some of the original witch hunt papers.