Jennet Device

I recently watched a documentary called The Pendle Witch Child about A 9 year old girl who testified against her whole family in a witchcraft trial in 1612.
Read her story here

I was so inspired by this story and the fact this young child condemned and most probably watched her own mother and family members hang.
Jennet eventually ended up on trial for witchcraft herself years later.
Here is my interpretation of her.

Etsy and Vintage Halloween

I have recently developed an addiction to Etsy, I've been buying some interesting new additions to my collection and generally browsing for hours.

during one late night Etsy binge I stumbled into the world of vintage Halloween items, and I just love them! I have been drooling over vintage boxed costumes from Collegeville and Ben Cooper.
I bought this lovely 1950s Devil costume, it has abit of a Casper the Friendly Ghost style to it.

It's inspired me to start drawing again, I have an idea for a series of images that i'll produce as small prints based on this vintage Halloween vibe I'm loving at the moment.
Today I found an old piece of backing card from a picture frame and I loved the old. browned paper, so I did a quick sketch on this.

Tewkesbury

I spent the day today wondering round Tewkesbury, a town about ten miles from me, so close by, yet I had no idea how much amazing history there is to see there. I unfortunately didn't have my camera with me, but I got some nice pictures on my phone although I will go back with my SLR soon!

I found an old Baptist Chapel down a tiny ally, with a small, secluded graveyard with gravestones dating from 1607 - the earliest I could decipher.

This fabulous little devil door knocker was on a tiny old door on the way down to the graveyard.

A particularly nice stone, partially broken, but the date is in the 1790s I just love the skull carving on this.

We then went into Tewkesbury Abbey, such a lovely building, full of ancient tombs and carvings, luckily I had my Dad with me to translate the Latin inscriptions :)

The main reason I visited Tewkesbury was to see a cadaver tomb I'd read about and it was stunning.
The monument is to John Wakeman who was Abbot of Tewkesbury  from 1531 to 1539, he prepared the tomb for himself with Vermin crawling over the skeletal cadaver, but he never used the tomb and was buried elsewhere.