Boscastle's Museum of Witchcraft, Part 1

Not far from Tintagel is a picturesque Cornish village called Boscastle. With a natural inlet harbour, it is a valuable fishing port. Over the past decade, Boscastle has suffered a couple of devastating floods, but you would never know it now by looking at its charming buildings and lovely shops. One of Boscastle's main tourist attractions is the Museum of Witchcraft located just off its main street.

When you arrive at the Museum, there is a sign directing you to park your broom in the space provided. Very cute!

Inside the Museum are two floors of densely packed exhibits on all kinds of witchy, occult matters. When visiting this Museum, it's important to keep two things in mind:

(1) This is not a professionally curated museum. It is a labour of love by those who are devoted to witchcraft. There's a real feeling that you have just entered "collectors' heaven" with eclectic exhibits all cheek-by-jowl with each other. Sometimes there's not enough information about what you're looking at. Sometimes there's too much. But we were charmed by much of what we saw and found almost everything interesting.

(2) This is very much a museum of British witchcraft. It focuses on local, practical folklore, superstitions and traditions of England and Cornwall. So there are lots of exhibits on poppets, curses, herbology, poisons, fertility symbols, etc. This is most definitely NOT a museum about modern Wicca or today's pagan movement as experienced in North America. Almost everything in the Museum predates the 1960s (at the very latest).

In the next two posts, I'll tell you about the exhibits which we found most fascinating.