The Last Witch

Thought to be the last 'witch' on the Isle of Wight, Molly Downer was thought to have been born around the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as the illegitimate daughter of a reverend. Ridiculed and ostracised for her rejection of attempts to push religion upon her; her healing charms and her harsh words and curses towards her harassers, Molly lived a reclusive life near Bembridge in a cottage now known as Witches Hatch. The few visitors to her cottage noted its strange contents including dolls impaled with pins and dozens of bottles containing peculiar liquids strung from the ceilings. Molly is buried in Brading churchyard.