Richard Suggett

Witches in Wales

This talk discusses the troubling history of prosecutions for witchcraft in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Wales.  There are many questions which can now be answered: Who were the suspected witches? What were they accused of?  Who were the accusers?  What happened to the suspects? The talk on Nos Calan Gaeaf / Hallowe’en draws on the National Library’s magnificent Court of Great Sessions archive.  The evidence is now published in a new book by Richard Suggett:  Welsh Witches: Narratives of Witchcraft and Magic from Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century Wales (Atramentous Press, 2018).

Biography

Richard Suggett is a historian, currently senior investigator at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, and Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies.  He is the author of A History of Magic and Witchcraft in Wales (2005) as well as studies on the architecture and social history of medieval and later Wales.