Qualla: Museum of Witchcraft and Magic

Museum of Witchcraft and Magic: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1954 Cecil Williamson tried to open a museum of witchcraft in Bourton-on-the-Water, in the Cotswolds. The villagers responded with painted slogans, dead cats hung in the trees, and finally arson. Six years earlier he had tried Stratford-upon-Avon, where the council blocked his plans. After Stratford he tried Castletown on the Isle of Man, and after the Cotswolds he tried Windsor, where local opinion drove him out again. In 1960 he settled the museum in Boscastle, on the north coast of Cornwall, in a small stone building beside the harbour. It has been there ever since. It now holds the largest collection of witchcraft-related artefacts in the world. In August 2004 the harbour rose up to its windows. The museum survived.

Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 4.0

Museum of Witchcraft and Magic: A Man Who Knew Witches

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bryn Holmes, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cecil Williamson was a former film producer with a personal interest - perhaps practical, perhaps just curious - in folk magic. He believed in the cunning folk, the village wise women and wise men of pre-industrial Britain, and he wanted to preserve their material culture before ...

Image: Bryn Holmes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Museum of Witchcraft and Magic: Driven Out

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jeff collins, CC BY-SA 2.0. What followed was a small, sustained, and largely unrecorded persecution. In Windsor the museum opened for the 1954 tourist season and did well financially, but local opinion was against it and Williamson moved on. He chose Bourton-on-the-Water, a pretty Cotswold village. There t...

Image: jeff collins | CC BY-SA 2.0

Museum of Witchcraft and Magic: Joan's Cottage

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Midnightblueowl at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Williamson's interest was always practical folk magic - what he called the "wayside witch" - rather than the ceremonial magic of Aleister Crowley or the new ritual structures of Wicca. The museum's centrepiece is still "Joan's Cottage," a reconstruction of a nineteenth-century cu...

Image: Midnightblueowl at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Museum of Witchcraft and Magic: Joan Wytte's Burial

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rob Purvis, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1996 Williamson sold the museum to Graham King and Liz Crow, who finalised the purchase at midnight on Halloween. King was a Hampshire camera manufacturer who had discovered the museum was for sale in a newspaper article. He and Crow began a quiet reorganisation. They removed ...

Image: Rob Purvis | CC BY-SA 2.0

Museum of Witchcraft and Magic: What the Museum Is Really About

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Hogg, CC BY-SA 2.0. It is easy to mistake the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic for camp. It is not. The collection is one of the most serious anthropological archives of British folk belief that exists. The artefacts come from the actual practice of actual people - cunning folk who were the village's ...

Image: Graham Hogg | CC BY-SA 2.0