The Crossroads

There is a crossroads in Great Leighs, a quiet Essex village between Chelmsford and Braintree, that was once known as Scrapfaggot Green. The name alone is enough to give pause — scrapfaggot being an old Essex dialect word for a witch. For centuries, a large boulder sat at this crossroads, and for centuries, nobody moved it.

They knew what was underneath.

The Witch Trials of Essex

Essex holds a distinction that no county would choose: it was the most prolific county in England for witch trials. Between 1560 and 1680, more people were tried and executed for witchcraft in Essex than anywhere else in the country. The county's proximity to the strongholds of Puritanism, its network of zealous magistrates, and — most infamously — the arrival of Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled Witchfinder General, created a perfect storm of persecution.

Hopkins operated primarily in Essex and Suffolk between 1644 and 1647. In those three years, he was responsible for the deaths of more alleged witches than had been executed in the previous hundred years combined. His methods were systematic and cruel: sleep deprivation, "swimming" tests where the accused were bound and thrown into water, and the searching of bodies for "witch marks" — any mole, birthmark, or blemish that could be presented as evidence of a pact with the devil.

Great Leighs was not spared. Local tradition holds that a woman was executed for witchcraft in the village — the records are fragmentary, as they often are for rural Essex — and that her body was buried at the crossroads with a heavy stone placed over the grave. This was standard practice for suspected witches: crossroads confused the spirit, preventing it from finding its way home, and the stone pinned it down. It was not a burial so much as a containment.

The stone at Scrapfaggot Green sat undisturbed for approximately three hundred years.

The Removal

In 1944, during the construction of an airfield at Great Leighs to support the war effort, the stone was moved. Some accounts say it was shifted by military vehicles; others that it was deliberately removed by the parish council to widen the road for military traffic. The exact circumstances are disputed. What happened next is not.

Within weeks of the stone's removal, the village of Great Leighs was consumed by what can only be described as a poltergeist outbreak. Objects moved by themselves. A church bell rang with no one near it. Farm animals were found in impossible locations — a flock of sheep discovered inside a locked barn they could not have entered, chickens on rooftops. Doors slammed in empty houses. A hayrick caught fire spontaneously. The village pub, the Dog and Partridge, became a particular focus of activity: glasses flew off shelves, barrels in the cellar were found upended, and a sweetly oppressive smell — like decaying flowers — permeated the building for weeks despite every window being thrown open.

The vicar, the Reverend Hugh Ninnis, was initially skeptical. He changed his mind after witnessing a heavy oak table in the church vestry slide four feet across the floor without anyone touching it. He contacted the Bishop of Chelmsford, who authorised an exorcism — one of the few officially sanctioned by the Church of England in the twentieth century.

The story reached the national press. The Daily Mirror and the Essex Chronicle both ran features. Harry Price, the famous ghost hunter who had investigated Borley Rectory ("the most haunted house in England," just twenty miles away in Essex), expressed interest but died before he could visit.

The Exorcism and After

The Reverend Ninnis conducted the exorcism in late 1944, and the disturbances subsided. The stone was eventually returned to the crossroads — though not, locals insist, to its exact original position.

The activity reduced but never entirely stopped. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, residents of Great Leighs reported occasional disturbances — unexplained sounds, cold spots in buildings near the crossroads, animals behaving strangely. The Dog and Partridge continued to have a reputation for odd occurrences well into the 1990s.

More recently, the crossroads itself has been the site of sightings. A dark figure — always described as female, always at the edge of vision — has been reported by drivers passing through at night. She stands at the verge of the road, and when you look directly at her, she is gone. A dog walker in 2018 described an overwhelming feeling of being watched while passing the spot at dusk, followed by the distinct sound of footsteps behind her on the path. She turned to find nobody there, but her dog was pressed flat against the ground, whimpering.

Visiting Scrapfaggot Green

Great Leighs is an easy drive from Chelmsford, just off the A131. The crossroads where the stone sat is at the junction of Main Road and Boreham Road. There is no marker, no plaque, no sign. Essex does not memorialise its witch history with the same enthusiasm as, say, Salem. The stone has been moved so many times that locals disagree on its current location — some say it's in a hedgerow near the crossroads, others that it was broken up decades ago.

The Dog and Partridge pub has since been demolished and replaced by a modern development. But the crossroads remains, and so does the feeling. Stand there at dusk, at the junction of two ancient roads, and consider what was buried at your feet for three hundred years.

Consider that somebody moved it.

And consider that whatever was underneath may not have gone back.