East Lothian Witch Trials Memorial Project

The East Lothian Witch Trials Memorial Project is a community-led, non-profit project working to create permanent memorials across East Lothian for the people who were accused and executed for witchcraft.

Our aim is to bring their names and stories, wherever surviving records allow us to identify them, back into the towns and villages where they lived and ensure that this important part of East Lothian’s history is remembered.

During the period of the Scottish witch trials, East Lothian was known as Haddingtonshire and played a significant part in Scotland’s witch-trial history, including the infamous North Berwick Witch Trials of 1590–91.

This history did not happen somewhere far away. It happened here, in the towns, villages and landscapes we still know today.

Our first memorial – Haddington

We are beginning the project in Haddington, with our first proposed memorial at Haddington Sands, a location historically connected with witchcraft executions.

Our vision is to create a permanent memorial plaque alongside a memorial bench and a small remembrance garden, creating a peaceful place where people can stop, reflect and learn about what happened there.

Our current £2,500 fundraising target is specifically for the Haddington memorial.

Funds raised through this appeal will go towards creating and installing the Haddington memorial, including the plaque, bench, site preparation and remembrance garden.

But Haddington is only the beginning.

Once the Haddington memorial has been achieved, the East Lothian Witch Trials Memorial Project will continue to fundraise for future memorials across East Lothian, working through the towns and villages connected with the witch trials.

Where historical research allows us to establish the identities of those affected and the places connected with their persecution, we hope to preserve that history within the communities themselves.

Keeping their stories alive

Alongside the physical memorials, we are carrying out extensive research into the East Lothian witch trials and are working on an East Lothian Witch Trials Memorial Book, with profits going back into the project.

We have also created our white foxglove memorial pins, which will be sold through participating businesses across East Lothian to help raise further funds.

As the project grows, we hope to hold history talks, workshops, community fundraising events and other activities to help people learn more about the witch trials and become involved in preserving this history.

Our longer-term plans also include a website linked to the memorials through QR codes, allowing visitors to discover more about the people and history connected with each location and enabling us to add new information as further records are uncovered.

Many witch-trial records are incomplete or have been lost entirely. We therefore want these memorials to remember both those whose names have survived and those whose names have been lost to history.

We are not currently a registered charity. The East Lothian Witch Trials Memorial Project is a community-led, non-profit project, and the money raised will be used to further the aims of the memorial project.

We have already raised our first £176.16 at our opening fundraising event, and now we are asking for your help to reach our £2,500 target and make the Haddington memorial a reality.

Every donation, no matter how small, brings us another step closer.

Haddington will be our first memorial — but it will not be our last.

Our hope is eventually to create places of remembrance across East Lothian, bringing this history back into the communities where it belongs and ensuring that the people who suffered are not forgotten.

We want to bring their names home.

Thank you for supporting the East Lothian Witch Trials Memorial Project.

Marie Gilroy Macpherson & Natalie Wheelan/Mcintyre