The door to Aldeburgh’s Moot Hall had always been firmly shut whenever Margaret Meyer visited the town, but one rainy afternoon the museum was open... and she was astonished at what she found inside.
'I love that particular building on the seafront,' she says, 'and I was expecting to find out more about the history, or the fishing, or the people of the town. I had no idea there would be anything about witch-hunting.' Though Margaret had heard of the ‘witchfinder general’ Matthew Hopkins, she hadn’t realised that women in East Anglia in the 17th century were recruited to seek out witches among themselves, in their own community. She was compelled not only to find out more, but to imagine the lives of the women affected and then to write their story.
The result is The Witching Tide, Margaret’s first novel, published this month. She's received rave reviews, her writing compared to that of Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood. 'It’s been a big surprise,' Margaret says of the response to the book. 'I thought I was writing an obscure literary novel about something that happened in East Anglia a very long time ago. I thought the readership would be limited.' But the story has clearly struck a chord, coming from her own profound engagement with the historical events which inspired the novel, and their parallels in life today.
'I wanted to honour those women who lost their lives,' she says. 'Women who were found guilty of being witches were hanged at sites around the county but often their names and burial places were not recorded. If the historical record is incomplete, there’s a writing out of women. I wanted to write them back in.'
Margaret started the book as part of an MA at the University of East Anglia. Raised in New Zealand, she moved to the UK for work and then settled here after meeting her husband. Though she’d enjoyed a career in publishing, before retraining as a mental health therapist with her own practice, she always wanted to write and was was accepted onto the prose fiction course at UEA. She had been working on a historical novel, but needed a story for a crime writing module with an emphasis on plot and suspense.
'I was very moved by the exhibition at the Moot Hall,' she says. 'Something ignited in me. What would it have been like? The Civil War was raging. Aldeburgh harbour was silting up and that was killing livelihoods and trade. At that time, East Anglia was seen as a notoriously primitive backwater. Then, all of a sudden, a witch hunt lands in the town and you find yourself drawn in whether you agree with it or not.'
Even though she has written fiction, Margaret's story is underpinned by facts - true stories of real people. She turned to books by historian Malcolm Gaskill, Lowestoft’s Ivan Bunn, and a book on midwifery by the 17th century writer Jane Sharp. 'In the early stages of writing I would spend hours on research,' says Margaret. 'I call it composting, where you collect material to build your world. Like a magpie, I gathered information about the period to understand the ambience, the atmosphere. And it was a stinky old time, the 17th century, no flushing toilets! So I spent a fascinating couple of days researching piss alleys.'
The story is set in Cleftwater, a coastal town like Aldeburgh, and revolves around Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer and servant. An older woman and trusted member of the community, Martha is enlisted to search the bodies of the accused women to prove witchcraft has taken place, at the same time keeping a secret that threatens her own freedom. In her plight, Martha, who doesn’t speak, grasps at a wax witching doll, a poppet, which she inherited from her mother, hoping it will give her protection.
'The character of Martha fully emerged out of the mists of my imagination and became very central. She wants to live a quiet life, but she doesn’t have the chance. The book is about Martha’s choices, and her struggle deciding what is the right thing to do. The poppet, for me, was an emblem of Martha’s grappling with morality. It is the grey area, when the world is presented as black or white. People in uncertain times like black and white rhetoric because it’s easier. But life isn’t like that.'
Certainly, in the world today, we’re seeing polarities of views, and we can draw other similarities with the witch hunts, Margaret says. 'The interest in witch trials and the paradigm of the witch has been gathering momentum over the past few years,' she says. Indeed, her book has been placed in the genre of ‘witch lit’. But this category is much more than sinister figures dancing around a cauldron, she says. 'There’s a desire to understand what went on in those witch trials, why women were singled out in the way they were.
'Even today witch hunting in its broadest sense is still going on around the world. Freedoms and rights are distressingly easily overturned. Globally, we’re seeing women’s rights being curtailed and rising violence against women.'
Against that backdrop, readers are increasingly turning to examples of women who’ve been subversive, who’ve been marginalised or have fought discrimination, says Margaret. 'In past times, the figure of the witch has been an affront to patriarchal norms, and we’re looking to them now for their power, courage and inspiration.'
The Witching Tide is published by Phoenix. Margaret Meyer will be speaking about her book at Woodbridge Library on Tuesday July 4 at 7.30pm. Information at moreaboutbooks.com
