Under a spell

We’re in Creswell to see the anti-­witch marks. Known more formally as apotropaic marks, they are shapes, symbols and letters carved into caverns and stables and homes and churches. It is widely accepted that they were believed to protect against not only witches but anything supernatural and nefarious. The marks date most often from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, coinciding with the height of the witch-­hunts that saw thousands of people, mostly women, executed throughout Europe.
Apotropaic marks consist of curving lines known as daisy wheels and hexafoils. Their mechanism of protection works to trap demons in the stone by tricking them into following the lines, around and around, for eternity. Sometimes they are Marian symbols, made up of ‘M’ or ‘V’ or ‘A’, to invoke the Virgin Mary. Other apotropaic marks are even more basic. They can be in the form of a burn mark to prevent a fire taking hold. They can be found above the stall of a prized horse, in cellars, on lintels, mantels, doorways, windows.
Apotropaic marks are a sort of magic that lingers. Entwined so closely with domestic spaces, they are frequently overlooked.