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https://www.wacoca.com/news/2922684/ 「たま警視」訓練に励む学生の心の支えに 岡山県警察学校 | JAPAN Forward #cat #cats #okayama #OkayamaPrefecture #カルチャー #岡山 #岡山県
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https://www.wacoca.com/news/2922684/ 「たま警視」訓練に励む学生の心の支えに 岡山県警察学校 | JAPAN Forward #cat #cats #okayama #OkayamaPrefecture #カルチャー #岡山 #岡山県
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https://www.wacoca.com/news/2922684/ 「たま警視」訓練に励む学生の心の支えに 岡山県警察学校 | JAPAN Forward #cat #cats #okayama #OkayamaPrefecture #カルチャー #岡山 #岡山県
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Stray Cat Nursed Back to Health by Train Staff, Climbs the Ranks to Become Stationmaster
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The Chinese Miracle Box from Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir reaches 10K supporters on LEGO Ideas with 2,274 functional pieces.
Read more in brick.news: https://brick.news/articles/legor-ideas-chinese-miracle-box-hits-10k-supporters-with-miraculous-appeal?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=buffer&utm_content=article-816
#Ideas #DisplaySet #LEGOIDEAS #LEGOBricks -
NOW ON VERDANT SQUARE RADIO ==
NOW PLAYING == Episode 1112: USPS Whistleblower Claims Portal to Verify Citizenship of Mail-In Voters Risks ‘Cat... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7NeKghVzLA&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon == RESIST WITH VSN
https://mastodon.social/@VerdantSquareRadio/117202368213627564
#news #arts #left #commentary #radio #publicradio #community #progressive #green #kyndmix #vsn #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft #SupportIndependentMedia
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NOW ON VERDANT SQUARE RADIO ==
NOW PLAYING == Episode 1112: USPS Whistleblower Claims Portal to Verify Citizenship of Mail-In Voters Risks ‘Cat... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7NeKghVzLA&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon == RESIST WITH VSN
https://mastodon.social/@VerdantSquareRadio/117202368213627564
#news #arts #left #commentary #radio #publicradio #community #progressive #green #kyndmix #vsn #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft #SupportIndependentMedia
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NOW ON VERDANT SQUARE RADIO ==
NOW PLAYING == Episode 1112: USPS Whistleblower Claims Portal to Verify Citizenship of Mail-In Voters Risks ‘Cat... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7NeKghVzLA&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon == RESIST WITH VSN
https://mastodon.social/@VerdantSquareRadio/117202368213627564
#news #arts #left #commentary #radio #publicradio #community #progressive #green #kyndmix #vsn #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft #SupportIndependentMedia
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NOW ON VERDANT SQUARE RADIO ==
NOW PLAYING == Episode 1112: USPS Whistleblower Claims Portal to Verify Citizenship of Mail-In Voters Risks ‘Cat... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7NeKghVzLA&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon == RESIST WITH VSN
https://mastodon.social/@VerdantSquareRadio/117202368213627564
#news #arts #left #commentary #radio #publicradio #community #progressive #green #kyndmix #vsn #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft #SupportIndependentMedia
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https://www.wacoca.com/news/2922684/ 「たま警視」訓練に励む学生の心の支えに 岡山県警察学校 | JAPAN Forward #cat #cats #okayama #OkayamaPrefecture #カルチャー #岡山 #岡山県
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Cats. What are you going to do?
"Cat accidentally discarded with old couch is found at a landfill, reunited with family"
#Cats #CatsOfMastodon #Recycle
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/national-international/cat-couch-landfill-family/4008147/
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Cats. What are you going to do?
"Cat accidentally discarded with old couch is found at a landfill, reunited with family"
#Cats #CatsOfMastodon #Recycle
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/national-international/cat-couch-landfill-family/4008147/
-
Cats. What are you going to do?
"Cat accidentally discarded with old couch is found at a landfill, reunited with family"
#Cats #CatsOfMastodon #Recycle
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/national-international/cat-couch-landfill-family/4008147/
-
Cats. What are you going to do?
"Cat accidentally discarded with old couch is found at a landfill, reunited with family"
#Cats #CatsOfMastodon #Recycle
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/national-international/cat-couch-landfill-family/4008147/
-
Cats. What are you going to do?
"Cat accidentally discarded with old couch is found at a landfill, reunited with family"
#Cats #CatsOfMastodon #Recycle
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/national-international/cat-couch-landfill-family/4008147/
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https://www.europesays.com/iran/271934/ Police warn of possible fisher cat attack in Lebanon #animal #attack #cat #Fish #fisher #FisherCat #game #hampshire #Lebanon #new #NewHampshire #News #NH #police #WCAX #wild
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#Arts #Culture #ArtHistory #NVO987 #NEXARIUM
Toronto: Noomi Rapace Plays FBI Agent Hunting Suicidal Fugitive in ‘In Alaska’ Clip (Exclusive)
The cat-and-mouse thriller from directors Jaap van Heusden and Vinnie Karetak and also starring newcomer Leo Mathew Temela will have a world premiere at TIFF.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/toronto-noomi-rapace-in-alaska-clip-exclusive-1236686701/ -
#Arts #Culture #ArtHistory #NVO987 #NEXARIUM
Toronto: Noomi Rapace Plays FBI Agent Hunting Suicidal Fugitive in ‘In Alaska’ Clip (Exclusive)
The cat-and-mouse thriller from directors Jaap van Heusden and Vinnie Karetak and also starring newcomer Leo Mathew Temela will have a world premiere at TIFF.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/toronto-noomi-rapace-in-alaska-clip-exclusive-1236686701/ -
#Arts #Culture #ArtHistory #NVO987 #NEXARIUM
Toronto: Noomi Rapace Plays FBI Agent Hunting Suicidal Fugitive in ‘In Alaska’ Clip (Exclusive)
The cat-and-mouse thriller from directors Jaap van Heusden and Vinnie Karetak and also starring newcomer Leo Mathew Temela will have a world premiere at TIFF.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/toronto-noomi-rapace-in-alaska-clip-exclusive-1236686701/ -
#Arts #Culture #ArtHistory #NVO987 #NEXARIUM
Toronto: Noomi Rapace Plays FBI Agent Hunting Suicidal Fugitive in ‘In Alaska’ Clip (Exclusive)
The cat-and-mouse thriller from directors Jaap van Heusden and Vinnie Karetak and also starring newcomer Leo Mathew Temela will have a world premiere at TIFF.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/toronto-noomi-rapace-in-alaska-clip-exclusive-1236686701/ -
NOW ON VERDANT SQUARE RADIO ==
NOW PLAYING == Episode 1112: USPS Whistleblower Claims Portal to Verify Citizenship of Mail-In Voters Risks ‘Cat... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7NeKghVzLA&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon == RESIST WITH VSN
https://mastodon.social/@VerdantSquareRadio/117202368213627564
#news #arts #left #commentary #radio #publicradio #community #progressive #green #kyndmix #vsn #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft #SupportIndependentMedia
-
https://www.europesays.com/iran/273931/ Police search for animal involved in 3 attacks in Lebanon #animal #attack #cat #centerra #fisher #FisherCat #FOX #Lebanon #NewHampshire #News #NH #park #people #WCAX
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https://www.europesays.com/iran/273709/ Police search for animal involved in 3 attacks at Lebanon park #animal #attack #cat #centerra #fisher #FisherCat #FOX #Lebanon #NewHampshire #News #NH #park #people #WCAX
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Put It Back
Years ago, at the yard where I kept my horses, an old outbuilding gave up something a little bit unexpected.
A dried cat.
I don’t know exactly how old the building was. I believe it may have once been part of a row of terraced cottages that had otherwise been demolished, but I have never established that firmly enough to state it is fact. Nor can I now prove that the cat had been placed their deliberately. Mostly because… well, cats are cats. They chase mice, they crawl into holes, they investigate places from which they later discover they can’t get out. Sometimes, they hide away because it’s their time to die. So finding the naturally mummified remains of a cat inside an old building does not automatically mean somebody put it there to ward off witches.
Nevertheless, I remembered it. Because finding a dead cat preserved within the fabric of an old building is not something you easily forget.
Then, years later, I met another one. This time, I was volunteering at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.
In early January 2017, renovation work was taking place at the former Post Office in the Quadrant in Buxton. During the work, the workmen disturbed part of the ceiling. And a dried cat fell out. Literally, it just dropped from the ceiling cavity during the work.
The owner of the building, Maxine Chuwen, saved it being thrown into the skip and eventually took it to the museum. I can vaguely remember it arriving. By then I’d already encountered one dried cat in an old building. Now someone walked into the museum with another. This one subsequently became part of the museum collection as DERSB:2017.1, it was cleaned and stabilised, researched and eventually, displayed. Since then, it has made it’s way into the archaeological history on something I think is absolutely wonderful.
Magical House Protection.
Welcome back to Old Magic. Pull up a chair…
When you start dismantling old British houses, occasionally you find things that have absolutely no business being where they are.
A single child shoe inside a wall…
A bottle beneath a hearth…
Marks carved beside a fireplace…
A horse skull underneath a floor…
A bundle of clothing above a ceiling…
A dried cat in a roof.
Sometimes, several objects appear together, and once archaeologists started to record where these things were found, an intriguing pattern emerged. They frequently occur at the vulnerable parts of buildings – chimneys, hearths and doors. Windows, roofs and floors. Thresholds. The places where the outside world could get in.
For people living in a world inhabited by witches, fairies, spirits, demons, illness, bad luck and things that went bump in considerably less metaphorical nights, a house was more than shelter. It was a boundary. Inside was us, outside was everything else. And boundaries needed protecting.
Let’s start with the shoes, because there are an extraordinary number of them. So many in fact, that Northampton Museum and Art Gallery maintains a ‘Concealed Shoe Index’, established by footwear historian June Swann, recording shoes discovered deliberately hidden within the buildings. They have been found in chimneys and behind fireplaces. Under floorboards and inside walls. Above ceilings and around doors and windows. Sometimes there’s a pair but very often there isn’t, just one worn shoe. Adult shoes, children’s shoes, boots, slippers – footwear that somebody could apparently have thrown away, but chose instead to place somewhere very difficult to retrieve.
The practice is particularly fascinating because we have the physical evidence but very little contemporary explanation from the people who actually did it. Nobody seems to have thought:
“I’d better write down why I’ve Just bricked up Ethel’s left shoe in the chimney in case somebody finds it in 250 years…”
They just did it. And that silence has left researchers with several theories.
Perhaps a worn shoe retained something of the person who had worn it – this would fit very well with the magical logic that we’ve already encountered this week. A shoe gradually takes on the shape of it’s owner. It contains the impression of the foot. It is intensely individual. Perhaps it functioned as a substitute for the person. Perhaps it attracted or trapped something harmful. Perhaps it brought luck or protected the household. Perhaps different people concealed shoes for different reasons – we don’t know. Old Magic is full of wonderfully neat explanations invented long after the people performing the ritual had stopped explaining themselves. But the honest answer is sometimes considerably more interesting:
Somebody thought that this mattered. We just don’t know precisely what they thought it did.
The earliest examples stretch right back into the medieval period, while the practice continued for centuries afterwards. By the time researchers began seriously recording concealed footwear, examples had turned up across Britain and much further afield. One nineteenth century child’s shoe in Northampton’s collection was discovered in a ground floor ceiling beneath a beam. A single little shoe, hidden where nobody was supposed to see it.
The there are the bottles.
The so-called witch bottle is perhaps easier to interpret because some historical accounts actually describe the practice. From around the seventeenth century, bottles and jars could be filled with combinations of urine, pins, nails. thorns, teeth, hair, nail clippings and other materials. Sometimes they were heated, sometimes burned, sometimes buried. Sometimes they were concealed beneath hearths, thresholds or floors.
The logic was counter-magic. If someone believed they had been bewitched, bodily material from the victim could be placed inside the bottle alongside sharp objects. The magical connection between witch and victim could supposedly be exploited in reverse. The witch who had reached into the house magically could be hurt through that connection.
Other bottles appear to have functioned more generally as protective deposits. Again, the location matters. The hearth, chimney and doorways were openings. The threshold marked the precise place where outside became inside. Put protection there and maybe whatever was outside stayed outside.
Sometimes the protection wasn’t hidden at all. Look closely at old buildings and you may find curious marks scratched or carved into the timber or stone. Intersecting circles. Daisy wheel or hexafoil designs. Repeated V’s. Mesh like patterns and burn marks. These are often described as ‘apotropaic marks’ from a word meaning something intended to turn away or avert harm. They occur around fireplaces, doors, windows and other openings with suspicious frequency.
Historic England’s public survey of these so-called witches’ marks generated hundreds of reports and one of Britain’s most spectacular concentrations was discovered somewhere very familiar to Derbyshire readers.
Creswell Crags.
The caves on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border contain an extraordinary collection of marks interpreted as protective, including numerous designs around holes and crevices. Places something might emerge. Once again: boundary. Opening. Protection.But houses sometimes contain rather larger surprises.
Like horses. Or at least their heads.
Horse skulls have been discovered beneath floors and within walls in Britain and Ireland and their interpretation is complicated.
Some appear to have been deliberately deposited. In Ireland particularly, there is a longstanding explanation that horse skulls placed beneath floors improved the resonance for music and dancing. In other contexts, researchers have suggested ritual or protective meanings. The two explanations need not necessarily apply to every find – that is another useful warning. Finding an unusual object hidden in a building doesn’t automatically make it magical. Context is everything.
Which brings us back to the cats.
Dried or naturally mummified cats have been discovered in old buildings across Britain. Some may simply be unfortunate animals that crawled into cavities while hunting rodents and never escaped. Others are considerably harder to explain that way. Cats have been found in sealed locations. Some appear to have been deliberately positioned. There are even reported examples associated with rats or mice in arrangements suggesting that the animals were already dead when placed there.
Various explanations have been proposed. Perhaps the cat symbolically continued hunting vermin. Perhaps it protected the household. Perhaps it deterred supernatural intruders. Perhaps the animal itself had some apotropaic significance.
Again, nobody left us the instruction manual.
And that is why I’m cautious about my first cat. I saw it. I know it came from an old outbuilding. But without knowing enough about the precise building, its date and the exact context in which the cat was found, I can’t tell you that somebody deliberately put it there. It might have been Old Magic. It might have just been an unlucky cat.
The Buxton cat is more intriguing.
The building in The Quadrant dates from the nineteenth century, and the cat was found in a ceiling cavity during restoration. Newspapers dating from the 1890s were reportedly found in the same general space, although that does not prove that the cat was deposited at the same time. It is now catalogued among documented British examples of dried cats discovered within buildings.
And here’s the part I particularly love. These traditions didn’t necessarily end when we stopped believing in them.
Because sometimes modern people find these objects. And put them back.
During renovations begun in 2012 at a historic building in Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland, three individual children’s shoes were discovered hidden in separate walls. The owners researched them. They learned about the tradition of concealed shoes. They registered their finds with the Concealed Shoe Index. Then the building was converted into three houses. And they put one shoe back into each house. They hoped the shoes would continue to bring luck.
Think about what has just happened there.
A ritual is performed. Its original meaning is forgotten. Centuries pass. The building is opened.
Modern people discover the objects. They research the lost ritual. And then they perform it again.
The tradition has effectively resurrected itself.
Research into concealed footwear has found this reaction repeatedly. People discover an old shoe and feel strangely uncomfortable about simply throwing it away.
Some give it to a museum.
Some display it.
Some keep it near the place where it was found.
And some put it straight back into the wall.
Research on concealed deposits records June Swann’s observation that English finders often instinctively returned shoes to their original locations. Some reportedly became genuinely uneasy at the thought of the shoe leaving the building, as though removing it might also remove whatever protection it had provided. And I completely understand them.
Imagine it.
You’re renovating your house. You remove some plaster and behind it is a tiny, worn child’s shoe. Nobody has seen it for perhaps two hundred years. You discover that people once hid shoes inside houses, possibly for protection or luck. You are a rational twenty-first-century human being. You do not believe that witches enter through chimneys. You do not believe malevolent spirits lurk behind the skirting board. You do not believe a battered old shoe has spent two centuries standing supernatural guard over the spare bedroom. Obviously.
So you throw it away.
Do you?
Because the moment somebody tells you that the shoe may have been protecting the house for two hundred years, another tiny voice appears.
“It’s not hurting anything. It belongs there. Why risk it?”
And suddenly the plasterboard is going back up with the shoe behind it. That may be the most beautiful example of Old Magic we’ve found yet. Not because an eighteenth-century family believed in magical protection, we expect people in the past to have beliefs different from ours. What fascinates me is the modern hand putting the object back. The person who knows the history, knows the archaeology, knows there is no demonstrable mechanism by which an old shoe can protect a building from supernatural attack. And still thinks:
“Leave it where it was.”
Maybe that isn’t belief exactly.
Maybe it’s respect. An unwillingness to break a chain. Maybe old objects acquire authority simply by surviving. Maybe knowing that another human being deliberately placed something there centuries ago makes removing it feel intrusive.
Or maybe, beneath all our electric lights, central heating, video doorbells and home insurance policies, the old magical map of the house still makes a peculiar kind of emotional sense.
There is inside. There is outside. There are openings between them and we want the things we love to be safe. So we lock the door. Check the windows. Leave a light on.
Hang something beside the entrance. Keep particular objects because they make the house feel right.
And if we discover that somebody long dead left something inside the wall to protect the place?
Well.
Maybe it can stay.
I’ve encountered two dried cats from old buildings in my lifetime. One remains a mystery. The other fell out of a Buxton ceiling in 2017 and ended up in the museum where I was volunteering. Neither proves that every dried cat in every roof was deliberately concealed. Neither gives us a neat explanation for why people placed animals, shoes, bottles and other objects inside buildings. But together with thousands of other discoveries, they remind us that our ancestors sometimes constructed houses with more than timber, stone and plaster.
They built beliefs into them. Protection beneath the floor, luck inside the wall, warnings beside the door and something watching the chimney. Most of it was never meant to be seen again.
Until somebody renovates the kitchen.
So if you live in an old house and one day the builder calls you over with a peculiar expression and something dusty in his hand, take a photograph. Record exactly where it came from. Don’t immediately assume it’s witchcraft, find out what you’ve actually got. And whatever you do, treat it with respect. Then decide what happens next.
Museum? Display case? Back inside the wall?
I know what plenty of perfectly sensible people have chosen.
They put it back.
And between you and me?
I probably would too.
#ApotropaicMagic #Archaeology #BritishFolklore #BuildingFolklore #BuxtonFolklore #BuxtonMuseum #ConcealedObjects #ConcealedShoes #CounterWitchcraft #CreswellCrags #DerbyshireFolklore #DriedCats #folkMagic #ForgottenFolklore #HorseSkulls #HouseProtection #HouseholdMagic #MummifiedCats #MysteriousTimes #OldMagic #ProtectiveMagic #RitualMarks #Superstitions #WitchBottles #WitchesMarks -
Put It Back
Years ago, at the yard where I kept my horses, an old outbuilding gave up something a little bit unexpected.
A dried cat.
I don’t know exactly how old the building was. I believe it may have once been part of a row of terraced cottages that had otherwise been demolished, but I have never established that firmly enough to state it is fact. Nor can I now prove that the cat had been placed their deliberately. Mostly because… well, cats are cats. They chase mice, they crawl into holes, they investigate places from which they later discover they can’t get out. Sometimes, they hide away because it’s their time to die. So finding the naturally mummified remains of a cat inside an old building does not automatically mean somebody put it there to ward off witches.
Nevertheless, I remembered it. Because finding a dead cat preserved within the fabric of an old building is not something you easily forget.
Then, years later, I met another one. This time, I was volunteering at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.
In early January 2017, renovation work was taking place at the former Post Office in the Quadrant in Buxton. During the work, the workmen disturbed part of the ceiling. And a dried cat fell out. Literally, it just dropped from the ceiling cavity during the work.
The owner of the building, Maxine Chuwen, saved it being thrown into the skip and eventually took it to the museum. I can vaguely remember it arriving. By then I’d already encountered one dried cat in an old building. Now someone walked into the museum with another. This one subsequently became part of the museum collection as DERSB:2017.1, it was cleaned and stabilised, researched and eventually, displayed. Since then, it has made it’s way into the archaeological history on something I think is absolutely wonderful.
Magical House Protection.
Welcome back to Old Magic. Pull up a chair…
When you start dismantling old British houses, occasionally you find things that have absolutely no business being where they are.
A single child shoe inside a wall…
A bottle beneath a hearth…
Marks carved beside a fireplace…
A horse skull underneath a floor…
A bundle of clothing above a ceiling…
A dried cat in a roof.
Sometimes, several objects appear together, and once archaeologists started to record where these things were found, an intriguing pattern emerged. They frequently occur at the vulnerable parts of buildings – chimneys, hearths and doors. Windows, roofs and floors. Thresholds. The places where the outside world could get in.
For people living in a world inhabited by witches, fairies, spirits, demons, illness, bad luck and things that went bump in considerably less metaphorical nights, a house was more than shelter. It was a boundary. Inside was us, outside was everything else. And boundaries needed protecting.
Let’s start with the shoes, because there are an extraordinary number of them. So many in fact, that Northampton Museum and Art Gallery maintains a ‘Concealed Shoe Index’, established by footwear historian June Swann, recording shoes discovered deliberately hidden within the buildings. They have been found in chimneys and behind fireplaces. Under floorboards and inside walls. Above ceilings and around doors and windows. Sometimes there’s a pair but very often there isn’t, just one worn shoe. Adult shoes, children’s shoes, boots, slippers – footwear that somebody could apparently have thrown away, but chose instead to place somewhere very difficult to retrieve.
The practice is particularly fascinating because we have the physical evidence but very little contemporary explanation from the people who actually did it. Nobody seems to have thought:
“I’d better write down why I’ve Just bricked up Ethel’s left shoe in the chimney in case somebody finds it in 250 years…”
They just did it. And that silence has left researchers with several theories.
Perhaps a worn shoe retained something of the person who had worn it – this would fit very well with the magical logic that we’ve already encountered this week. A shoe gradually takes on the shape of it’s owner. It contains the impression of the foot. It is intensely individual. Perhaps it functioned as a substitute for the person. Perhaps it attracted or trapped something harmful. Perhaps it brought luck or protected the household. Perhaps different people concealed shoes for different reasons – we don’t know. Old Magic is full of wonderfully neat explanations invented long after the people performing the ritual had stopped explaining themselves. But the honest answer is sometimes considerably more interesting:
Somebody thought that this mattered. We just don’t know precisely what they thought it did.
The earliest examples stretch right back into the medieval period, while the practice continued for centuries afterwards. By the time researchers began seriously recording concealed footwear, examples had turned up across Britain and much further afield. One nineteenth century child’s shoe in Northampton’s collection was discovered in a ground floor ceiling beneath a beam. A single little shoe, hidden where nobody was supposed to see it.
The there are the bottles.
The so-called witch bottle is perhaps easier to interpret because some historical accounts actually describe the practice. From around the seventeenth century, bottles and jars could be filled with combinations of urine, pins, nails. thorns, teeth, hair, nail clippings and other materials. Sometimes they were heated, sometimes burned, sometimes buried. Sometimes they were concealed beneath hearths, thresholds or floors.
The logic was counter-magic. If someone believed they had been bewitched, bodily material from the victim could be placed inside the bottle alongside sharp objects. The magical connection between witch and victim could supposedly be exploited in reverse. The witch who had reached into the house magically could be hurt through that connection.
Other bottles appear to have functioned more generally as protective deposits. Again, the location matters. The hearth, chimney and doorways were openings. The threshold marked the precise place where outside became inside. Put protection there and maybe whatever was outside stayed outside.
Sometimes the protection wasn’t hidden at all. Look closely at old buildings and you may find curious marks scratched or carved into the timber or stone. Intersecting circles. Daisy wheel or hexafoil designs. Repeated V’s. Mesh like patterns and burn marks. These are often described as ‘apotropaic marks’ from a word meaning something intended to turn away or avert harm. They occur around fireplaces, doors, windows and other openings with suspicious frequency.
Historic England’s public survey of these so-called witches’ marks generated hundreds of reports and one of Britain’s most spectacular concentrations was discovered somewhere very familiar to Derbyshire readers.
Creswell Crags.
The caves on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border contain an extraordinary collection of marks interpreted as protective, including numerous designs around holes and crevices. Places something might emerge. Once again: boundary. Opening. Protection.But houses sometimes contain rather larger surprises.
Like horses. Or at least their heads.
Horse skulls have been discovered beneath floors and within walls in Britain and Ireland and their interpretation is complicated.
Some appear to have been deliberately deposited. In Ireland particularly, there is a longstanding explanation that horse skulls placed beneath floors improved the resonance for music and dancing. In other contexts, researchers have suggested ritual or protective meanings. The two explanations need not necessarily apply to every find – that is another useful warning. Finding an unusual object hidden in a building doesn’t automatically make it magical. Context is everything.
Which brings us back to the cats.
Dried or naturally mummified cats have been discovered in old buildings across Britain. Some may simply be unfortunate animals that crawled into cavities while hunting rodents and never escaped. Others are considerably harder to explain that way. Cats have been found in sealed locations. Some appear to have been deliberately positioned. There are even reported examples associated with rats or mice in arrangements suggesting that the animals were already dead when placed there.
Various explanations have been proposed. Perhaps the cat symbolically continued hunting vermin. Perhaps it protected the household. Perhaps it deterred supernatural intruders. Perhaps the animal itself had some apotropaic significance.
Again, nobody left us the instruction manual.
And that is why I’m cautious about my first cat. I saw it. I know it came from an old outbuilding. But without knowing enough about the precise building, its date and the exact context in which the cat was found, I can’t tell you that somebody deliberately put it there. It might have been Old Magic. It might have just been an unlucky cat.
The Buxton cat is more intriguing.
The building in The Quadrant dates from the nineteenth century, and the cat was found in a ceiling cavity during restoration. Newspapers dating from the 1890s were reportedly found in the same general space, although that does not prove that the cat was deposited at the same time. It is now catalogued among documented British examples of dried cats discovered within buildings.
And here’s the part I particularly love. These traditions didn’t necessarily end when we stopped believing in them.
Because sometimes modern people find these objects. And put them back.
During renovations begun in 2012 at a historic building in Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland, three individual children’s shoes were discovered hidden in separate walls. The owners researched them. They learned about the tradition of concealed shoes. They registered their finds with the Concealed Shoe Index. Then the building was converted into three houses. And they put one shoe back into each house. They hoped the shoes would continue to bring luck.
Think about what has just happened there.
A ritual is performed. Its original meaning is forgotten. Centuries pass. The building is opened.
Modern people discover the objects. They research the lost ritual. And then they perform it again.
The tradition has effectively resurrected itself.
Research into concealed footwear has found this reaction repeatedly. People discover an old shoe and feel strangely uncomfortable about simply throwing it away.
Some give it to a museum.
Some display it.
Some keep it near the place where it was found.
And some put it straight back into the wall.
Research on concealed deposits records June Swann’s observation that English finders often instinctively returned shoes to their original locations. Some reportedly became genuinely uneasy at the thought of the shoe leaving the building, as though removing it might also remove whatever protection it had provided. And I completely understand them.
Imagine it.
You’re renovating your house. You remove some plaster and behind it is a tiny, worn child’s shoe. Nobody has seen it for perhaps two hundred years. You discover that people once hid shoes inside houses, possibly for protection or luck. You are a rational twenty-first-century human being. You do not believe that witches enter through chimneys. You do not believe malevolent spirits lurk behind the skirting board. You do not believe a battered old shoe has spent two centuries standing supernatural guard over the spare bedroom. Obviously.
So you throw it away.
Do you?
Because the moment somebody tells you that the shoe may have been protecting the house for two hundred years, another tiny voice appears.
“It’s not hurting anything. It belongs there. Why risk it?”
And suddenly the plasterboard is going back up with the shoe behind it. That may be the most beautiful example of Old Magic we’ve found yet. Not because an eighteenth-century family believed in magical protection, we expect people in the past to have beliefs different from ours. What fascinates me is the modern hand putting the object back. The person who knows the history, knows the archaeology, knows there is no demonstrable mechanism by which an old shoe can protect a building from supernatural attack. And still thinks:
“Leave it where it was.”
Maybe that isn’t belief exactly.
Maybe it’s respect. An unwillingness to break a chain. Maybe old objects acquire authority simply by surviving. Maybe knowing that another human being deliberately placed something there centuries ago makes removing it feel intrusive.
Or maybe, beneath all our electric lights, central heating, video doorbells and home insurance policies, the old magical map of the house still makes a peculiar kind of emotional sense.
There is inside. There is outside. There are openings between them and we want the things we love to be safe. So we lock the door. Check the windows. Leave a light on.
Hang something beside the entrance. Keep particular objects because they make the house feel right.
And if we discover that somebody long dead left something inside the wall to protect the place?
Well.
Maybe it can stay.
I’ve encountered two dried cats from old buildings in my lifetime. One remains a mystery. The other fell out of a Buxton ceiling in 2017 and ended up in the museum where I was volunteering. Neither proves that every dried cat in every roof was deliberately concealed. Neither gives us a neat explanation for why people placed animals, shoes, bottles and other objects inside buildings. But together with thousands of other discoveries, they remind us that our ancestors sometimes constructed houses with more than timber, stone and plaster.
They built beliefs into them. Protection beneath the floor, luck inside the wall, warnings beside the door and something watching the chimney. Most of it was never meant to be seen again.
Until somebody renovates the kitchen.
So if you live in an old house and one day the builder calls you over with a peculiar expression and something dusty in his hand, take a photograph. Record exactly where it came from. Don’t immediately assume it’s witchcraft, find out what you’ve actually got. And whatever you do, treat it with respect. Then decide what happens next.
Museum? Display case? Back inside the wall?
I know what plenty of perfectly sensible people have chosen.
They put it back.
And between you and me?
I probably would too.
#ApotropaicMagic #Archaeology #BritishFolklore #BuildingFolklore #BuxtonFolklore #BuxtonMuseum #ConcealedObjects #ConcealedShoes #CounterWitchcraft #CreswellCrags #DerbyshireFolklore #DriedCats #folkMagic #ForgottenFolklore #HorseSkulls #HouseProtection #HouseholdMagic #MummifiedCats #MysteriousTimes #OldMagic #ProtectiveMagic #RitualMarks #Superstitions #WitchBottles #WitchesMarks -
Put It Back
Years ago, at the yard where I kept my horses, an old outbuilding gave up something a little bit unexpected.
A dried cat.
I don’t know exactly how old the building was. I believe it may have once been part of a row of terraced cottages that had otherwise been demolished, but I have never established that firmly enough to state it is fact. Nor can I now prove that the cat had been placed their deliberately. Mostly because… well, cats are cats. They chase mice, they crawl into holes, they investigate places from which they later discover they can’t get out. Sometimes, they hide away because it’s their time to die. So finding the naturally mummified remains of a cat inside an old building does not automatically mean somebody put it there to ward off witches.
Nevertheless, I remembered it. Because finding a dead cat preserved within the fabric of an old building is not something you easily forget.
Then, years later, I met another one. This time, I was volunteering at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.
In early January 2017, renovation work was taking place at the former Post Office in the Quadrant in Buxton. During the work, the workmen disturbed part of the ceiling. And a dried cat fell out. Literally, it just dropped from the ceiling cavity during the work.
The owner of the building, Maxine Chuwen, saved it being thrown into the skip and eventually took it to the museum. I can vaguely remember it arriving. By then I’d already encountered one dried cat in an old building. Now someone walked into the museum with another. This one subsequently became part of the museum collection as DERSB:2017.1, it was cleaned and stabilised, researched and eventually, displayed. Since then, it has made it’s way into the archaeological history on something I think is absolutely wonderful.
Magical House Protection.
Welcome back to Old Magic. Pull up a chair…
When you start dismantling old British houses, occasionally you find things that have absolutely no business being where they are.
A single child shoe inside a wall…
A bottle beneath a hearth…
Marks carved beside a fireplace…
A horse skull underneath a floor…
A bundle of clothing above a ceiling…
A dried cat in a roof.
Sometimes, several objects appear together, and once archaeologists started to record where these things were found, an intriguing pattern emerged. They frequently occur at the vulnerable parts of buildings – chimneys, hearths and doors. Windows, roofs and floors. Thresholds. The places where the outside world could get in.
For people living in a world inhabited by witches, fairies, spirits, demons, illness, bad luck and things that went bump in considerably less metaphorical nights, a house was more than shelter. It was a boundary. Inside was us, outside was everything else. And boundaries needed protecting.
Let’s start with the shoes, because there are an extraordinary number of them. So many in fact, that Northampton Museum and Art Gallery maintains a ‘Concealed Shoe Index’, established by footwear historian June Swann, recording shoes discovered deliberately hidden within the buildings. They have been found in chimneys and behind fireplaces. Under floorboards and inside walls. Above ceilings and around doors and windows. Sometimes there’s a pair but very often there isn’t, just one worn shoe. Adult shoes, children’s shoes, boots, slippers – footwear that somebody could apparently have thrown away, but chose instead to place somewhere very difficult to retrieve.
The practice is particularly fascinating because we have the physical evidence but very little contemporary explanation from the people who actually did it. Nobody seems to have thought:
“I’d better write down why I’ve Just bricked up Ethel’s left shoe in the chimney in case somebody finds it in 250 years…”
They just did it. And that silence has left researchers with several theories.
Perhaps a worn shoe retained something of the person who had worn it – this would fit very well with the magical logic that we’ve already encountered this week. A shoe gradually takes on the shape of it’s owner. It contains the impression of the foot. It is intensely individual. Perhaps it functioned as a substitute for the person. Perhaps it attracted or trapped something harmful. Perhaps it brought luck or protected the household. Perhaps different people concealed shoes for different reasons – we don’t know. Old Magic is full of wonderfully neat explanations invented long after the people performing the ritual had stopped explaining themselves. But the honest answer is sometimes considerably more interesting:
Somebody thought that this mattered. We just don’t know precisely what they thought it did.
The earliest examples stretch right back into the medieval period, while the practice continued for centuries afterwards. By the time researchers began seriously recording concealed footwear, examples had turned up across Britain and much further afield. One nineteenth century child’s shoe in Northampton’s collection was discovered in a ground floor ceiling beneath a beam. A single little shoe, hidden where nobody was supposed to see it.
The there are the bottles.
The so-called witch bottle is perhaps easier to interpret because some historical accounts actually describe the practice. From around the seventeenth century, bottles and jars could be filled with combinations of urine, pins, nails. thorns, teeth, hair, nail clippings and other materials. Sometimes they were heated, sometimes burned, sometimes buried. Sometimes they were concealed beneath hearths, thresholds or floors.
The logic was counter-magic. If someone believed they had been bewitched, bodily material from the victim could be placed inside the bottle alongside sharp objects. The magical connection between witch and victim could supposedly be exploited in reverse. The witch who had reached into the house magically could be hurt through that connection.
Other bottles appear to have functioned more generally as protective deposits. Again, the location matters. The hearth, chimney and doorways were openings. The threshold marked the precise place where outside became inside. Put protection there and maybe whatever was outside stayed outside.
Sometimes the protection wasn’t hidden at all. Look closely at old buildings and you may find curious marks scratched or carved into the timber or stone. Intersecting circles. Daisy wheel or hexafoil designs. Repeated V’s. Mesh like patterns and burn marks. These are often described as ‘apotropaic marks’ from a word meaning something intended to turn away or avert harm. They occur around fireplaces, doors, windows and other openings with suspicious frequency.
Historic England’s public survey of these so-called witches’ marks generated hundreds of reports and one of Britain’s most spectacular concentrations was discovered somewhere very familiar to Derbyshire readers.
Creswell Crags.
The caves on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border contain an extraordinary collection of marks interpreted as protective, including numerous designs around holes and crevices. Places something might emerge. Once again: boundary. Opening. Protection.But houses sometimes contain rather larger surprises.
Like horses. Or at least their heads.
Horse skulls have been discovered beneath floors and within walls in Britain and Ireland and their interpretation is complicated.
Some appear to have been deliberately deposited. In Ireland particularly, there is a longstanding explanation that horse skulls placed beneath floors improved the resonance for music and dancing. In other contexts, researchers have suggested ritual or protective meanings. The two explanations need not necessarily apply to every find – that is another useful warning. Finding an unusual object hidden in a building doesn’t automatically make it magical. Context is everything.
Which brings us back to the cats.
Dried or naturally mummified cats have been discovered in old buildings across Britain. Some may simply be unfortunate animals that crawled into cavities while hunting rodents and never escaped. Others are considerably harder to explain that way. Cats have been found in sealed locations. Some appear to have been deliberately positioned. There are even reported examples associated with rats or mice in arrangements suggesting that the animals were already dead when placed there.
Various explanations have been proposed. Perhaps the cat symbolically continued hunting vermin. Perhaps it protected the household. Perhaps it deterred supernatural intruders. Perhaps the animal itself had some apotropaic significance.
Again, nobody left us the instruction manual.
And that is why I’m cautious about my first cat. I saw it. I know it came from an old outbuilding. But without knowing enough about the precise building, its date and the exact context in which the cat was found, I can’t tell you that somebody deliberately put it there. It might have been Old Magic. It might have just been an unlucky cat.
The Buxton cat is more intriguing.
The building in The Quadrant dates from the nineteenth century, and the cat was found in a ceiling cavity during restoration. Newspapers dating from the 1890s were reportedly found in the same general space, although that does not prove that the cat was deposited at the same time. It is now catalogued among documented British examples of dried cats discovered within buildings.
And here’s the part I particularly love. These traditions didn’t necessarily end when we stopped believing in them.
Because sometimes modern people find these objects. And put them back.
During renovations begun in 2012 at a historic building in Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland, three individual children’s shoes were discovered hidden in separate walls. The owners researched them. They learned about the tradition of concealed shoes. They registered their finds with the Concealed Shoe Index. Then the building was converted into three houses. And they put one shoe back into each house. They hoped the shoes would continue to bring luck.
Think about what has just happened there.
A ritual is performed. Its original meaning is forgotten. Centuries pass. The building is opened.
Modern people discover the objects. They research the lost ritual. And then they perform it again.
The tradition has effectively resurrected itself.
Research into concealed footwear has found this reaction repeatedly. People discover an old shoe and feel strangely uncomfortable about simply throwing it away.
Some give it to a museum.
Some display it.
Some keep it near the place where it was found.
And some put it straight back into the wall.
Research on concealed deposits records June Swann’s observation that English finders often instinctively returned shoes to their original locations. Some reportedly became genuinely uneasy at the thought of the shoe leaving the building, as though removing it might also remove whatever protection it had provided. And I completely understand them.
Imagine it.
You’re renovating your house. You remove some plaster and behind it is a tiny, worn child’s shoe. Nobody has seen it for perhaps two hundred years. You discover that people once hid shoes inside houses, possibly for protection or luck. You are a rational twenty-first-century human being. You do not believe that witches enter through chimneys. You do not believe malevolent spirits lurk behind the skirting board. You do not believe a battered old shoe has spent two centuries standing supernatural guard over the spare bedroom. Obviously.
So you throw it away.
Do you?
Because the moment somebody tells you that the shoe may have been protecting the house for two hundred years, another tiny voice appears.
“It’s not hurting anything. It belongs there. Why risk it?”
And suddenly the plasterboard is going back up with the shoe behind it. That may be the most beautiful example of Old Magic we’ve found yet. Not because an eighteenth-century family believed in magical protection, we expect people in the past to have beliefs different from ours. What fascinates me is the modern hand putting the object back. The person who knows the history, knows the archaeology, knows there is no demonstrable mechanism by which an old shoe can protect a building from supernatural attack. And still thinks:
“Leave it where it was.”
Maybe that isn’t belief exactly.
Maybe it’s respect. An unwillingness to break a chain. Maybe old objects acquire authority simply by surviving. Maybe knowing that another human being deliberately placed something there centuries ago makes removing it feel intrusive.
Or maybe, beneath all our electric lights, central heating, video doorbells and home insurance policies, the old magical map of the house still makes a peculiar kind of emotional sense.
There is inside. There is outside. There are openings between them and we want the things we love to be safe. So we lock the door. Check the windows. Leave a light on.
Hang something beside the entrance. Keep particular objects because they make the house feel right.
And if we discover that somebody long dead left something inside the wall to protect the place?
Well.
Maybe it can stay.
I’ve encountered two dried cats from old buildings in my lifetime. One remains a mystery. The other fell out of a Buxton ceiling in 2017 and ended up in the museum where I was volunteering. Neither proves that every dried cat in every roof was deliberately concealed. Neither gives us a neat explanation for why people placed animals, shoes, bottles and other objects inside buildings. But together with thousands of other discoveries, they remind us that our ancestors sometimes constructed houses with more than timber, stone and plaster.
They built beliefs into them. Protection beneath the floor, luck inside the wall, warnings beside the door and something watching the chimney. Most of it was never meant to be seen again.
Until somebody renovates the kitchen.
So if you live in an old house and one day the builder calls you over with a peculiar expression and something dusty in his hand, take a photograph. Record exactly where it came from. Don’t immediately assume it’s witchcraft, find out what you’ve actually got. And whatever you do, treat it with respect. Then decide what happens next.
Museum? Display case? Back inside the wall?
I know what plenty of perfectly sensible people have chosen.
They put it back.
And between you and me?
I probably would too.
#ApotropaicMagic #Archaeology #BritishFolklore #BuildingFolklore #BuxtonFolklore #BuxtonMuseum #ConcealedObjects #ConcealedShoes #CounterWitchcraft #CreswellCrags #DerbyshireFolklore #DriedCats #folkMagic #ForgottenFolklore #HorseSkulls #HouseProtection #HouseholdMagic #MummifiedCats #MysteriousTimes #OldMagic #ProtectiveMagic #RitualMarks #Superstitions #WitchBottles #WitchesMarks -
Put It Back
Years ago, at the yard where I kept my horses, an old outbuilding gave up something a little bit unexpected.
A dried cat.
I don’t know exactly how old the building was. I believe it may have once been part of a row of terraced cottages that had otherwise been demolished, but I have never established that firmly enough to state it is fact. Nor can I now prove that the cat had been placed their deliberately. Mostly because… well, cats are cats. They chase mice, they crawl into holes, they investigate places from which they later discover they can’t get out. Sometimes, they hide away because it’s their time to die. So finding the naturally mummified remains of a cat inside an old building does not automatically mean somebody put it there to ward off witches.
Nevertheless, I remembered it. Because finding a dead cat preserved within the fabric of an old building is not something you easily forget.
Then, years later, I met another one. This time, I was volunteering at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.
In early January 2017, renovation work was taking place at the former Post Office in the Quadrant in Buxton. During the work, the workmen disturbed part of the ceiling. And a dried cat fell out. Literally, it just dropped from the ceiling cavity during the work.
The owner of the building, Maxine Chuwen, saved it being thrown into the skip and eventually took it to the museum. I can vaguely remember it arriving. By then I’d already encountered one dried cat in an old building. Now someone walked into the museum with another. This one subsequently became part of the museum collection as DERSB:2017.1, it was cleaned and stabilised, researched and eventually, displayed. Since then, it has made it’s way into the archaeological history on something I think is absolutely wonderful.
Magical House Protection.
Welcome back to Old Magic. Pull up a chair…
When you start dismantling old British houses, occasionally you find things that have absolutely no business being where they are.
A single child shoe inside a wall…
A bottle beneath a hearth…
Marks carved beside a fireplace…
A horse skull underneath a floor…
A bundle of clothing above a ceiling…
A dried cat in a roof.
Sometimes, several objects appear together, and once archaeologists started to record where these things were found, an intriguing pattern emerged. They frequently occur at the vulnerable parts of buildings – chimneys, hearths and doors. Windows, roofs and floors. Thresholds. The places where the outside world could get in.
For people living in a world inhabited by witches, fairies, spirits, demons, illness, bad luck and things that went bump in considerably less metaphorical nights, a house was more than shelter. It was a boundary. Inside was us, outside was everything else. And boundaries needed protecting.
Let’s start with the shoes, because there are an extraordinary number of them. So many in fact, that Northampton Museum and Art Gallery maintains a ‘Concealed Shoe Index’, established by footwear historian June Swann, recording shoes discovered deliberately hidden within the buildings. They have been found in chimneys and behind fireplaces. Under floorboards and inside walls. Above ceilings and around doors and windows. Sometimes there’s a pair but very often there isn’t, just one worn shoe. Adult shoes, children’s shoes, boots, slippers – footwear that somebody could apparently have thrown away, but chose instead to place somewhere very difficult to retrieve.
The practice is particularly fascinating because we have the physical evidence but very little contemporary explanation from the people who actually did it. Nobody seems to have thought:
“I’d better write down why I’ve Just bricked up Ethel’s left shoe in the chimney in case somebody finds it in 250 years…”
They just did it. And that silence has left researchers with several theories.
Perhaps a worn shoe retained something of the person who had worn it – this would fit very well with the magical logic that we’ve already encountered this week. A shoe gradually takes on the shape of it’s owner. It contains the impression of the foot. It is intensely individual. Perhaps it functioned as a substitute for the person. Perhaps it attracted or trapped something harmful. Perhaps it brought luck or protected the household. Perhaps different people concealed shoes for different reasons – we don’t know. Old Magic is full of wonderfully neat explanations invented long after the people performing the ritual had stopped explaining themselves. But the honest answer is sometimes considerably more interesting:
Somebody thought that this mattered. We just don’t know precisely what they thought it did.
The earliest examples stretch right back into the medieval period, while the practice continued for centuries afterwards. By the time researchers began seriously recording concealed footwear, examples had turned up across Britain and much further afield. One nineteenth century child’s shoe in Northampton’s collection was discovered in a ground floor ceiling beneath a beam. A single little shoe, hidden where nobody was supposed to see it.
The there are the bottles.
The so-called witch bottle is perhaps easier to interpret because some historical accounts actually describe the practice. From around the seventeenth century, bottles and jars could be filled with combinations of urine, pins, nails. thorns, teeth, hair, nail clippings and other materials. Sometimes they were heated, sometimes burned, sometimes buried. Sometimes they were concealed beneath hearths, thresholds or floors.
The logic was counter-magic. If someone believed they had been bewitched, bodily material from the victim could be placed inside the bottle alongside sharp objects. The magical connection between witch and victim could supposedly be exploited in reverse. The witch who had reached into the house magically could be hurt through that connection.
Other bottles appear to have functioned more generally as protective deposits. Again, the location matters. The hearth, chimney and doorways were openings. The threshold marked the precise place where outside became inside. Put protection there and maybe whatever was outside stayed outside.
Sometimes the protection wasn’t hidden at all. Look closely at old buildings and you may find curious marks scratched or carved into the timber or stone. Intersecting circles. Daisy wheel or hexafoil designs. Repeated V’s. Mesh like patterns and burn marks. These are often described as ‘apotropaic marks’ from a word meaning something intended to turn away or avert harm. They occur around fireplaces, doors, windows and other openings with suspicious frequency.
Historic England’s public survey of these so-called witches’ marks generated hundreds of reports and one of Britain’s most spectacular concentrations was discovered somewhere very familiar to Derbyshire readers.
Creswell Crags.
The caves on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border contain an extraordinary collection of marks interpreted as protective, including numerous designs around holes and crevices. Places something might emerge. Once again: boundary. Opening. Protection.But houses sometimes contain rather larger surprises.
Like horses. Or at least their heads.
Horse skulls have been discovered beneath floors and within walls in Britain and Ireland and their interpretation is complicated.
Some appear to have been deliberately deposited. In Ireland particularly, there is a longstanding explanation that horse skulls placed beneath floors improved the resonance for music and dancing. In other contexts, researchers have suggested ritual or protective meanings. The two explanations need not necessarily apply to every find – that is another useful warning. Finding an unusual object hidden in a building doesn’t automatically make it magical. Context is everything.
Which brings us back to the cats.
Dried or naturally mummified cats have been discovered in old buildings across Britain. Some may simply be unfortunate animals that crawled into cavities while hunting rodents and never escaped. Others are considerably harder to explain that way. Cats have been found in sealed locations. Some appear to have been deliberately positioned. There are even reported examples associated with rats or mice in arrangements suggesting that the animals were already dead when placed there.
Various explanations have been proposed. Perhaps the cat symbolically continued hunting vermin. Perhaps it protected the household. Perhaps it deterred supernatural intruders. Perhaps the animal itself had some apotropaic significance.
Again, nobody left us the instruction manual.
And that is why I’m cautious about my first cat. I saw it. I know it came from an old outbuilding. But without knowing enough about the precise building, its date and the exact context in which the cat was found, I can’t tell you that somebody deliberately put it there. It might have been Old Magic. It might have just been an unlucky cat.
The Buxton cat is more intriguing.
The building in The Quadrant dates from the nineteenth century, and the cat was found in a ceiling cavity during restoration. Newspapers dating from the 1890s were reportedly found in the same general space, although that does not prove that the cat was deposited at the same time. It is now catalogued among documented British examples of dried cats discovered within buildings.
And here’s the part I particularly love. These traditions didn’t necessarily end when we stopped believing in them.
Because sometimes modern people find these objects. And put them back.
During renovations begun in 2012 at a historic building in Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland, three individual children’s shoes were discovered hidden in separate walls. The owners researched them. They learned about the tradition of concealed shoes. They registered their finds with the Concealed Shoe Index. Then the building was converted into three houses. And they put one shoe back into each house. They hoped the shoes would continue to bring luck.
Think about what has just happened there.
A ritual is performed. Its original meaning is forgotten. Centuries pass. The building is opened.
Modern people discover the objects. They research the lost ritual. And then they perform it again.
The tradition has effectively resurrected itself.
Research into concealed footwear has found this reaction repeatedly. People discover an old shoe and feel strangely uncomfortable about simply throwing it away.
Some give it to a museum.
Some display it.
Some keep it near the place where it was found.
And some put it straight back into the wall.
Research on concealed deposits records June Swann’s observation that English finders often instinctively returned shoes to their original locations. Some reportedly became genuinely uneasy at the thought of the shoe leaving the building, as though removing it might also remove whatever protection it had provided. And I completely understand them.
Imagine it.
You’re renovating your house. You remove some plaster and behind it is a tiny, worn child’s shoe. Nobody has seen it for perhaps two hundred years. You discover that people once hid shoes inside houses, possibly for protection or luck. You are a rational twenty-first-century human being. You do not believe that witches enter through chimneys. You do not believe malevolent spirits lurk behind the skirting board. You do not believe a battered old shoe has spent two centuries standing supernatural guard over the spare bedroom. Obviously.
So you throw it away.
Do you?
Because the moment somebody tells you that the shoe may have been protecting the house for two hundred years, another tiny voice appears.
“It’s not hurting anything. It belongs there. Why risk it?”
And suddenly the plasterboard is going back up with the shoe behind it. That may be the most beautiful example of Old Magic we’ve found yet. Not because an eighteenth-century family believed in magical protection, we expect people in the past to have beliefs different from ours. What fascinates me is the modern hand putting the object back. The person who knows the history, knows the archaeology, knows there is no demonstrable mechanism by which an old shoe can protect a building from supernatural attack. And still thinks:
“Leave it where it was.”
Maybe that isn’t belief exactly.
Maybe it’s respect. An unwillingness to break a chain. Maybe old objects acquire authority simply by surviving. Maybe knowing that another human being deliberately placed something there centuries ago makes removing it feel intrusive.
Or maybe, beneath all our electric lights, central heating, video doorbells and home insurance policies, the old magical map of the house still makes a peculiar kind of emotional sense.
There is inside. There is outside. There are openings between them and we want the things we love to be safe. So we lock the door. Check the windows. Leave a light on.
Hang something beside the entrance. Keep particular objects because they make the house feel right.
And if we discover that somebody long dead left something inside the wall to protect the place?
Well.
Maybe it can stay.
I’ve encountered two dried cats from old buildings in my lifetime. One remains a mystery. The other fell out of a Buxton ceiling in 2017 and ended up in the museum where I was volunteering. Neither proves that every dried cat in every roof was deliberately concealed. Neither gives us a neat explanation for why people placed animals, shoes, bottles and other objects inside buildings. But together with thousands of other discoveries, they remind us that our ancestors sometimes constructed houses with more than timber, stone and plaster.
They built beliefs into them. Protection beneath the floor, luck inside the wall, warnings beside the door and something watching the chimney. Most of it was never meant to be seen again.
Until somebody renovates the kitchen.
So if you live in an old house and one day the builder calls you over with a peculiar expression and something dusty in his hand, take a photograph. Record exactly where it came from. Don’t immediately assume it’s witchcraft, find out what you’ve actually got. And whatever you do, treat it with respect. Then decide what happens next.
Museum? Display case? Back inside the wall?
I know what plenty of perfectly sensible people have chosen.
They put it back.
And between you and me?
I probably would too.
#ApotropaicMagic #Archaeology #BritishFolklore #BuildingFolklore #BuxtonFolklore #BuxtonMuseum #ConcealedObjects #ConcealedShoes #CounterWitchcraft #CreswellCrags #DerbyshireFolklore #DriedCats #folkMagic #ForgottenFolklore #HorseSkulls #HouseProtection #HouseholdMagic #MummifiedCats #MysteriousTimes #OldMagic #ProtectiveMagic #RitualMarks #Superstitions #WitchBottles #WitchesMarks -
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Lucy The Cat 61. Meeting Request Form – May 2025 62. Retro Road Test: 1994 Porsche 928 GTS vs Jaguar XJS 4.0 & V12 63. Podcast: The Top 10 Open Source Self-Hosted Tools for the Micro Private/Alternatives Investor 64. Podcast: Retro Road Test: Alfa Romeo 164 Cloverleaf vs Lancia Thema Turbo (1991) 65. Fiona 5th Anniversary 66. Retro Road Test: Alfa Romeo GTV Twin Spark vs Fiat Coupé 20V Turbo (1995) 67. How I got big in Lingerie! 68. How to Keep £400,000 of Spending Secret from a Significant Other 69. So Where Am I On Police Reforms 70. Stolen Watch – July 2026 71. Meeting Request Form – June 2026 72. Download: Mid December 2025 Requirements 73. Boat Test: Fleming 58 and the Grand Banks Aleutian 59 74. Podcast: Retro Road Test: Piaggio Sfera 50 vs Yamaha Jog 50 75. Turning Off CourtGuinness.com 76. Meeting Request Form – June 2025 77. The Current State Of Cobol 78. So Warwickshire Police DO have Theiving Police Officers! 79. BP Blog 80. Podcast: What Skills Can the NHS Bring to Micro Private Equity? 81. Citroën CX vs Peugeot 505 – A 1986 UK-Spec Road Test 82. Podcast: Branding I devised 83. Microblog: Did You Know? August 2026 84. Retro Browser Wars: Internet Explorer vs Netscape Navigator 85. Road Test: Daihatsu Copen vs Honda S660 — The Battle of Japan’s Pocket Rockets 86. Representatives Required For Court Guinness In Westmorland 87. Podcast: Has Thomas Overcooked The Hotel Sales Marketplace? 88. Retro Road Test: BMW 735i vs Lexus LS400 (1990) 89. Court Report 25/08/2026 (1) @ 14:05 90. Building a Bloomberg Terminal on a Budget Using Open Source Software 91. So The Public Sector Are Complaining Again! 92. Police Policy Updated August 2026 93. Unpaid, Late, and Aged Debt from 01/08/2026 94. Liveaboard Boat Required August 2026 95. Full Blacklist August 2026 96. Pub Required – July 2026 97. August 2026 – Specialist Solicitor Required 98. Retro Road Test: Cizeta V16T vs Lamborghini Diablo 99. Blacklist: Warwickshire Police: August 2026 100. Welsh Borders Requirements August 2026 101. Borland Delphi Vs Visual Basic 102. Meeting Request Form – August 2026 103. Podcast: Retro Road Test: 1992 Isuzu Trooper vs Mitsubishi Shogun 104. Blacklist: Warwickshire County Council August 2026 105. Property Requirement 07/2026 – North West UK 106. Save £384 on iPhone! 107. July 2026: Podcasts Ranked Highest to Lowest Plays 108. Publishing 109. Retro Road Test: Ford Escort Cosworth vs. Lancia Delta Integrale 110. A Comparative Analysis of the BBC Micro and the Acorn Electron 111. Care Homes Wanted – December 2025 112. Over £310 Million Of Business Opportunities In London and The Home Counties In One Place 113. Page Two 114. Most Popular Content – November 2025 115. Trade house Magazine 116. Mid July 2026 Advertised Requirements 117. Intellectual Property For Sale – November 2025 118. Download: Late February 2024 Requirements 119. Cafe Required Welsh Borders 120. What Happened to Dbase? 121. Download: May 2025 Requirements 122. Press 123. Podcast: Why the NHS 1–10 Pain Scale is Not Fit for Purpose and Should Be Replaced 124. Podcast: Privatisation of the NHS: A Comparative Analysis of Arguments For and Against 125. Drive In Restaurant Premises Required In Denbighshire #2024 #blog #bulletin #community #courtGuinness #news #report #september2024 #topPosts #writing -
Triangle Big Ticket Event Guide September 1–7th Edition
The Triangle’s September entertainment calendar opens with a packed week of concerts, comedy shows, and live performances across Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and surrounding communities.
Major highlights for September 1–7, 2026, include Bryson Tiller, Grupo Frontera, Gary Clark Jr., Social Distortion, Melissa Etheridge, Empire of the Sun, Jesse & Joy, Orchestra Noir, and multiple performances from comedians Tony Baker and Alvin Kuai.
Use the DoRaleigh Triangle Big Ticket Event Guide to plan your concerts and comedy shows for the week.
Tuesday, September 1Jutes & In Color
Time: 7 p.m.
Venue: The Lincoln Theatre
Location: Raleigh, NCMeltt
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Motorco Music Hall
Location: Durham, NCProfanatica
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pour House Music Hall
Location: Raleigh, NC
Wednesday, September 2Tee Sanders
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCKash’d Out
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pour House Music Hall
Location: Raleigh, NCBig D and The Kids Table
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pinhook
Location: Durham, NCMyka Lace
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Location: Carrboro, NC
Thursday, September 3Social Distortion
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: The Ritz
Location: Raleigh, NCGary Clark Jr.
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Durham Performing Arts Center
Location: Durham, NCWinston Hodges
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCTopOppGen
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Lincoln Theatre
Location: Raleigh, NCThe Monsters
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Local 506
Location: Chapel Hill, NCWill Slater
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Location: Carrboro, NC
Friday, September 4Tony Baker
Showtimes: 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCShinyribs
Time: 7 p.m.
Venue: Stewart Theater
Location: Dunn, NCBryson Tiller
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
Location: Raleigh, NCAlvin Kuai
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m.
Venue: Room 861 at Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCMostley Crue
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Lincoln Theatre
Location: Raleigh, NCREZN
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Stanczyks
Location: Durham, NCDoom Scroll
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Local 506
Location: Chapel Hill, NCOrchestra Noir
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Raleigh Memorial Auditorium at Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts
Location: Raleigh, NCAnne-Claire
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Location: Carrboro, NC
Saturday, September 5Tony Baker
Showtimes: 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCAlvin Kuai
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.
Venue: Room 861 at Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCThe 4411
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Local 506
Location: Chapel Hill, NCGrupo Frontera
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Red Hat Amphitheater
Location: Raleigh, NCMelissa Etheridge
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Carolina Theatre
Location: Durham, NCJesse & Joy
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Raleigh Memorial Auditorium at Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts
Location: Raleigh, NCSchur
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Location: Carrboro, NCInfinity Dream
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pour House Music Hall
Location: Raleigh, NCEarther
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Kings
Location: Raleigh, NC
Sunday, September 6Karen Rontowski
Time: 6 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCEmpire of the Sun
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
Location: Raleigh, NCAlvin Kuai
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCCrud
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Kings
Location: Raleigh, NC
Monday, September 7Spike Hellis
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pinhook
Location: Durham, NC
Plan Your Week of Triangle EntertainmentThis week’s Triangle entertainment schedule offers everything from arena-ready R&B and Latin music to rock, blues, indie shows, orchestral performances, and stand-up comedy.
Friday and Saturday contain the largest concentration of events, so concertgoers should account for downtown traffic, parking, venue entry procedures, and overlapping showtimes when making plans. Tickets for major performers and smaller-capacity venues may sell quickly.
Artists, times, venues, ticket availability, and entry requirements are subject to change. Confirm all details with the official venue or ticket provider before purchasing tickets or traveling to an event.
Follow DoRaleigh.com for weekly Triangle concert guides, comedy shows, Raleigh nightlife, major events, and things to do across the region.
Connect With Us: Instagram | Facebook | BSky | Linkedin
Share With Us: Post your community News, Events, on our Submissions Page.
Advertise With Us: Interested in Advertising click here.Published by Bryan Tomlinson | BTDesigns.pro |
#AlvinKuai #BrysonTiller #CarrboroEvents #ChapelHillConcerts #DurhamConcerts #EmpireOfTheSun #events #GaryClarkJr #GrupoFrontera #liveMusicRaleigh #MelissaEtheridge #News #OrchestraNoir #RaleighComedyShows #RaleighConcerts #SocialDistortion #thingsToDoInRaleigh #TonyBaker #TriangleComedy #TriangleConcertGuide #TriangleEvents -
Triangle Big Ticket Event Guide September 1–7th Edition
The Triangle’s September entertainment calendar opens with a packed week of concerts, comedy shows, and live performances across Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and surrounding communities.
Major highlights for September 1–7, 2026, include Bryson Tiller, Grupo Frontera, Gary Clark Jr., Social Distortion, Melissa Etheridge, Empire of the Sun, Jesse & Joy, Orchestra Noir, and multiple performances from comedians Tony Baker and Alvin Kuai.
Use the DoRaleigh Triangle Big Ticket Event Guide to plan your concerts and comedy shows for the week.
Tuesday, September 1Jutes & In Color
Time: 7 p.m.
Venue: The Lincoln Theatre
Location: Raleigh, NCMeltt
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Motorco Music Hall
Location: Durham, NCProfanatica
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pour House Music Hall
Location: Raleigh, NC
Wednesday, September 2Tee Sanders
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCKash’d Out
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pour House Music Hall
Location: Raleigh, NCBig D and The Kids Table
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pinhook
Location: Durham, NCMyka Lace
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Location: Carrboro, NC
Thursday, September 3Social Distortion
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: The Ritz
Location: Raleigh, NCGary Clark Jr.
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Durham Performing Arts Center
Location: Durham, NCWinston Hodges
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCTopOppGen
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Lincoln Theatre
Location: Raleigh, NCThe Monsters
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Local 506
Location: Chapel Hill, NCWill Slater
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Location: Carrboro, NC
Friday, September 4Tony Baker
Showtimes: 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCShinyribs
Time: 7 p.m.
Venue: Stewart Theater
Location: Dunn, NCBryson Tiller
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
Location: Raleigh, NCAlvin Kuai
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m.
Venue: Room 861 at Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCMostley Crue
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Lincoln Theatre
Location: Raleigh, NCREZN
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Stanczyks
Location: Durham, NCDoom Scroll
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Local 506
Location: Chapel Hill, NCOrchestra Noir
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Raleigh Memorial Auditorium at Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts
Location: Raleigh, NCAnne-Claire
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Location: Carrboro, NC
Saturday, September 5Tony Baker
Showtimes: 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCAlvin Kuai
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.
Venue: Room 861 at Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCThe 4411
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Local 506
Location: Chapel Hill, NCGrupo Frontera
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Red Hat Amphitheater
Location: Raleigh, NCMelissa Etheridge
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Carolina Theatre
Location: Durham, NCJesse & Joy
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Raleigh Memorial Auditorium at Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts
Location: Raleigh, NCSchur
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Location: Carrboro, NCInfinity Dream
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pour House Music Hall
Location: Raleigh, NCEarther
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Kings
Location: Raleigh, NC
Sunday, September 6Karen Rontowski
Time: 6 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCEmpire of the Sun
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
Location: Raleigh, NCAlvin Kuai
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Goodnights Comedy Club
Location: Raleigh, NCCrud
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Kings
Location: Raleigh, NC
Monday, September 7Spike Hellis
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Pinhook
Location: Durham, NC
Plan Your Week of Triangle EntertainmentThis week’s Triangle entertainment schedule offers everything from arena-ready R&B and Latin music to rock, blues, indie shows, orchestral performances, and stand-up comedy.
Friday and Saturday contain the largest concentration of events, so concertgoers should account for downtown traffic, parking, venue entry procedures, and overlapping showtimes when making plans. Tickets for major performers and smaller-capacity venues may sell quickly.
Artists, times, venues, ticket availability, and entry requirements are subject to change. Confirm all details with the official venue or ticket provider before purchasing tickets or traveling to an event.
Follow DoRaleigh.com for weekly Triangle concert guides, comedy shows, Raleigh nightlife, major events, and things to do across the region.
Connect With Us: Instagram | Facebook | BSky | Linkedin
Share With Us: Post your community News, Events, on our Submissions Page.
Advertise With Us: Interested in Advertising click here.Published by Bryan Tomlinson | BTDesigns.pro |
#AlvinKuai #BrysonTiller #CarrboroEvents #ChapelHillConcerts #DurhamConcerts #EmpireOfTheSun #events #GaryClarkJr #GrupoFrontera #liveMusicRaleigh #MelissaEtheridge #News #OrchestraNoir #RaleighComedyShows #RaleighConcerts #SocialDistortion #thingsToDoInRaleigh #TonyBaker #TriangleComedy #TriangleConcertGuide #TriangleEvents