Barony Centre – pockets of love exhibition
Between 1563 and 1736, around 4,000 people in Scotland were accused of witchcraft. Most of them were women. They were blamed for things that could not be proven, such as bad weather, sickness, or a failed harvest.
Once accused they were interrogated and tortured to extract a confession by the Kirk ministers and upstanding men of the place where they lived.
Pockets of Love
The Barony Centre, West Kilbride · 19–29th August
The confession was needed as there was no way to prove that someone had caused harm by practising witchcraft. Once a confession was extracted, they were sent to court for trial – the punishment for witchcraft was death or exile. The only memory we have left of them is their names and trial dates in the court records.
I am making a memorial Pocket for every woman accused of witchcraft, with the help of local community groups.
At this time women wore detachable pockets tied about her waist and under her skirt. In it she would have kept the only things she could truly call her own – love letters, charms, needles, thread and scissors. When I considered how to stitch a memorial for the Scottish women accused of witchcraft, the Pocket seemed the perfect object. Each Pocket of Love is hand embroidered with a single woman’s name, the date she was tried, and a wildflower from the land she would have known and loved.
This memorial is created from the ground up, by members of the communities where she once lived. It is not a monument imposed on the land, but rather a memorial that grows organically person by person, stitch by stitch.
I chose to symbolise each accused woman with a wildflower.
Sitting in my garden one sunny afternoon after I had let the grass grow long, I found myself surrounded by flowers – buttercups, plantains and dandelions. It occurred to me that you need only call a plant a weed for people to want it removed, just as you only needed to call a woman a witch to have her removed from society. Wildflowers – weeds – are beautiful and essential to our ecosystem; we would die without them.
This August, the very first Pockets of Love will go on show together for the first time
These Pockets, remembering the six women of West Kilbride and one from Portencross who were tried for witchcraft, have been stitched by a group of volunteer makers, and will be shown in an old church in Scotland’s only accredited Craft Town. Alongside them, two lifesize ravens made in textile sculpture will fight over how they are remembered.
Step inside and you’ll find the pockets laid out together for the first time. Each one carrying an accused woman’s name, the date of her trial, and a wild flower from the land that she once knew and loved. Walk the length of the room and you walk through seven lives, one thread at a time.
I am currently stitching a Pocket for Jonnet Boyd, from Portencross. She was put on trial on the 6th April 1658 alongside four women from West Kilbride. They were probably friends, forced to accuse each other during long periods of interrogation and torture at the Irvine presbytery.
I chose the Celandine to remember her – it is likely that Celandines would have lined the route she would have walked as she was marched first to Irvine, and then to Ayr for her trial. I hope the scattering of these bright, yellow spring flowers brought her some little comfort.
This exhibition is just the beginning
It gives us a chance to stand in a room with these women, to read their names, and remember them. It is my hope that over the coming years, village after village and town after town will also pick up their needles to create their own memorial for their own accused women, to make them their very own Pockets of Love.
If you’re near West Kilbride between the 19th and 29th of August, please come and join us. Entry is free.
