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Islandmagee, County Antrim, Northern Ireland · 1710–1711
The Islandmagee case began with reports of disturbances in a household and ended in a courtroom at Carrickfergus. Its surviving narrative includes thrown stones, disturbed bedding, a strange boy and the experiences of Mary Dunbar. Behind that extraordinary story are named women who denied the accusations against them, divided judges and a rare surviving body of documents from an Irish witch trial.
The place behind the story
Islandmagee is a peninsula on the County Antrim coast, east of Larne Lough. The household at the centre of the reports was that of James Haltridge, also written Hattridge in the original narrative. His mother Ann was the widow of a Presbyterian minister.
The modern Witches of Islandmagee project, led through Ulster University research, places the events in a predominantly Presbyterian community with strong Scottish connections. Its history follows the disturbances of 1710 into Mary Dunbar’s accusations in 1711 and the subsequent legal proceedings.
For the map, this is a Northern Ireland historical case. The landscape photograph shows the Knowehead area in modern times; it neither identifies an apparition nor reconstructs the house as it appeared in 1711. The household events and the trial at Carrickfergus are connected places, rather than one interchangeable location.
Ann Haltridge and the first disturbances
The surviving narrative opens in September 1710. It says small stones struck Ann while she sat by the kitchen fire. Later episodes concerned the bed: objects striking it, curtains moving and coverings being pulled away. A girl brought in to share the room was asked to light a candle and search.
The text says nothing was found during those searches. It also reports a contrast between quiet while the candle was lit and disturbance after it was extinguished. Those details belong to the narrative’s account of the household, rather than to an investigation conducted by UKPX.
The story initially revolves around a vulnerable older woman trying to sleep and a family trying to understand what was happening inside its rooms. That domestic beginning is easily lost when the case is introduced only through its later title as a witch trial.
The boy at the fire and the missing book
In December, the narrative describes a small boy arriving in worn clothing with a blanket around him. He reportedly refused questions, danced and moved between the house and outbuildings while servants tried to follow. In February, the figure became associated with a missing religious book.
The maid Margaret Spear is central to this part of the story. The narrative presents a conversation through a window, threats, stones and damage to glass. Ann did not necessarily perceive everything Margaret described: the text itself notes that she heard an exchange without seeing the figure to which the girl pointed.
That difference between witnesses is valuable. The original story contains overlapping experiences, not a single view shared by everyone. A claim made by the figure that James Haltridge had died was also contradicted within the narrative when he returned safely. The text preserves complications as well as dramatic incidents.
A death and a new arrival
Ann died on 22 February 1711. The narrative connects her final days with pain, fear and bedding reportedly arranged into the shape of a corpse. Neighbours and a Presbyterian minister attended the house, including periods spent in prayer.
Mary Dunbar, a young relation from County Down, entered the story after the death. The project history identifies her as eighteen. A missing apron, returned with knots tied in it, became part of the account of her subsequent distress.
The narrative then changes focus. Instead of mainly describing sounds and objects in the house, it records Mary’s fits, reported pains and descriptions of people she said were tormenting her. That shift carried the case from a household haunting towards accusations against living neighbours.
How descriptions became accusations
The narrative says Mary described women during or after her fits, sometimes naming them and sometimes giving physical details that others tried to match. People brought suspected women to her, watched her reactions and treated recognition or renewed distress as significant.
Janet Carson appears early in this sequence. Other names followed through a mixture of Mary’s descriptions, local identification and examinations organised by people around her. The account includes efforts to bring individuals without openly announcing who was coming.
These passages reveal the mechanism by which a disturbing experience became a criminal allegation. The accused were not figures photographed at a supernatural scene. They were living people whom others connected to reported visions and bodily symptoms. Retaining the steps between those things is essential to understanding what reached the court.
The eight women: names behind the label
The original narrative names the women convicted at the March assizes: Janet Liston, Elizabeth Sellor, Janet Carson, Catherine M’Calmond, Janet Main, Janet Latimer, Jean Millar and Margaret Mitchell. Spelling varies between documents and later histories.
Liston and Sellor were mother and daughter. The record does not support treating all eight as a single anonymous group with the same background or circumstances. William Tisdall’s trial account describes differences of age and appearance and records information about their work and religious practice.
Most importantly, he says they denied the charges. Their denials belong in the story alongside the accusations. A conviction is an event in the legal history of the case; it does not turn a reported vision into an independent observation of the person accused.
What William Tisdall saw at the trial
Tisdall wrote an account drawn from notes of the sworn witnesses. He described the presentation as disordered, with time and place difficult to follow. He also spoke to Mary after the proceedings, recording his impression of her manner and intelligence.
He reported handling feathers, yarn, pins and buttons produced as objects witnesses said had come from her mouth. Other testimony concerned knots appearing around her body, difficulty crossing a threshold and movements on or from a bed. These were the reported phenomena placed before the court.
Tisdall’s account is particularly revealing because it separates his own observations from evidence others gave. Handling objects in court was his experience; seeing those objects emerge was the witnesses’ claim. The distinction gives readers a much clearer view of the evidence than a retelling that merges everything into one witnessed event.
Two judges, different conclusions
The trial was held on 31 March 1711. The narrative describes proceedings running from early morning into the afternoon and records the jury’s guilty verdict. It gives the sentence as twelve months’ imprisonment and four appearances in the pillory.
Tisdall’s account preserves a disagreement between the judges. Judge Upton doubted that the women should be convicted on the basis of Mary’s visionary images and referred to their religious lives. Justice McCartney took a different view, after which the jury convicted them.
The division is one of the case’s most important surviving details. Doubts about how an extraordinary experience could establish another person’s guilt were being raised inside the courtroom itself. The eight women were not sentenced to burning or hanging in this trial; adding such an ending would replace the documented outcome with a different story.
The story continued after the verdict
The narrative describes further disturbances after March, including noises, bedding and reported threats to Mary. It also introduces William Sellor, husband of Janet Liston and father of Elizabeth, as a later accused man.
The project’s modern history distinguishes his later case from the women’s trial. Following Mary’s death, the allegation against him carried a different potential penalty; the historians describe his execution as probable, rather than a securely documented event. That uncertainty should remain attached to his outcome.
The continuation matters because a neat ending at the verdict would miss the way the narrative developed. The household reports, the women’s punishment and Sellor’s prosecution are successive parts of the history, with different evidence and consequences.
Reading the documents today
Andrew Sneddon and Shannon Devlin’s document project brings together the surviving narrative and Tisdall’s account with explanatory notes. The original texts preserve the language and assumptions of their time, including judgments based on appearance, reputation and religious identity.
Tisdall could accept the possibility of supernatural events while questioning whether the images Mary described established the guilt of particular people. That combination is more interesting than forcing every historical participant into a simple modern category of believer or sceptic.
The case also connects with Old Jeffrey at Epworth Rectory, only a few years later. Both contain domestic disturbances and religious interpretation, but their consequences were very different. At Islandmagee, the record leads directly to imprisonment and public punishment.
The best way to explore this case is through the documents and the landscape’s history. The map marker is an area reference, not an invitation to search a private house. Current public exhibitions or talks, when verified, belong separately in the events section.
Timeline
September 1710: the narrative dates the first disturbances affecting Ann Haltridge.
December 1710–February 1711: reports include the strange boy, missing book and disturbed bedding.
22 February 1711: Ann dies.
March 1711: Mary Dunbar’s descriptions lead to the detention of eight women.
31 March 1711: the women are convicted at Carrickfergus and sentenced to imprisonment and pillory.
Later in 1711: William Sellor faces a separate prosecution; his final fate is less securely documented.
Sources & further reading
Original documents: Witches of Islandmagee project — Andrew Sneddon, Shannon Devlin (eds), Documents from the Trial of the “Islandmagee Witches” at Carrickfergus Assizes, County Antrim, Ireland, 1711. Editorial credit and project introduction.
Read the original narrative and Tisdall’s trial account — the primary texts behind the detailed episodes, names, verdict and sentence above; the trial account is printed from its later published transmission.
Project history by Andrew Sneddon — community context, chronology and the distinction between the women’s trial and William Sellor’s later case.
Knowehead landscape reference — photographer’s coordinates at approximately one-kilometre precision; used as an area marker only.
UKPX historical case file. Researched and checked 3 November 2026. The pin marks the Knowehead area of Islandmagee using a published, approximately located landscape reference. It is not an exact identification of the historic house or permission to enter private property. The trials took place separately at Carrickfergus.
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