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If you’ve ever wandered through Pollok Park, crossed the White Cart Water or paused beside its historic buildings, you’ll know there is much to discover in this estate.

Lorraine Murray’s forthcoming book Witchcraft Most Foull: The Witches of Pollok Toun, invites you to look beyond the landscape and meet the people at the centre of the Pollok witchcraft case of 1676–77.​

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Before Pollok became the place many of us know today, it was home not only to a local Laird and his family, but also a working community of households, tenant farmers, servants, and skilled artisans.

It was within this community that an illness in Sir George Maxwell's household became the starting point for accusations of witchcraft.

How did those accusations take hold? What counted as evidence? And what can the surviving records really tell us about this case?

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Lorraine follows these questions and more using documentary evidence such as official records and accounts written at the time and afterwards. Along the way, she explores how the wider events affecting Scotland at this time shaped the events that followed. 

This is more than an account of a witchcraft trial. It is an invitation to see Pollok through its local history and landscape during a time of great religious upheaval and societal change. 

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Whether your interest begins with Scottish history, Glasgow’s heritage or a fondness for Pollok itself, this book offers a way into a complex and deeply human story.

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Meet Lorraine

For Lorraine Murray, Pollok is more than a subject of research. It is a place she has lived, worked, walked and photographed over many years.

An archivist and historian from Glasgow with a particular interest in the West of Scotland, Lorraine once lived in a cottage on Pollok Estate. 

That longstanding connection gives the book its strong sense of place. Alongside her examination of the witchcraft case, Lorraine explores the surrounding community, bringing the landscape and its history into the same frame.

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Please register your interest by signing up to our mailing list, and we will keep you up to date on the publication release and any upcoming events.

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