The trials of the nine Islandmagee ‘witches’ took place in March and September of 1711, in Carrickfergus, County Antrim. They were Ireland’s last witch trials held under a dedicated witchcraft law, the Witchcraft Act of 1586.

This is the first time all surviving documents – a contemporary pamphlet account, pre-trial depositions, letters and newspaper reports – relating to the trial have been brought together, introduced, transcribed, annotated, and made freely available. The transcripts amount to over 25, 000 words of text. Spelling, pagination and page layout have been reproduced from original sources, and annotation has been kept to a minimum and used primarily to clarify rather than to explain.

This project was funded by a Research Impact Award from Ulster University to Dr Andrew Sneddon. Transcription and annotation work was completed by Dr Shannon Devlin and Dr Sneddon in summer 2022. Design and web work was completed by Dr Victoria McCollum.

If using these transcriptions we request that you use this citation/reference: Andrew Sneddon, Shannon Devlin (eds), ‘Documents from the Trial of the “Islandmagee Witches” at Carrickfergus Assizes, County Antrim, Ireland, 1711” (https://w1711.org/originaldocs/).

Dr Andrew Sneddon, August 2022.

© 2022. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.

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