The first records with the name of Ailsworth come from the 10th century in a charter granting property in Ailsworth to Bishop Athelwold, the Bishop of Peterborough. What is extraordinary about this record is the journey with which the land came into the hands of Wulfstan Uccea, who was granting the land to Bishop Aethelwold.
In 948 the property in Ailsworth was owned by a widow with a son: neither of them are ever named in the document. The lands had been removed from the widow when an effigy of Wulfstan’s father Alfsige had been found in her property with pins in it. We might recognise this as a form of voodoo nowadays, but the practice has been used for hundreds of years and was known as a form of witchcraft for which the stated punishment was extreme fasting for the perpetrator. However the widow was found guilty of being a witch and ‘taken and drowned at London Bridge’1. There are no specific details to this event and several people have debated the reason for her drowning and where indeed she actually died. One theory is that it was perhaps a mob reaction to the widow being identified as a witch, or perhaps she had been guilty of another crime not mentioned, which would have warranted the death penalty. Her son managed to escape and was described as an outlaw, which may suggest that it wasn’t a mob that caused her death.
As for the bridge, either the Great North Road (A1) or Peterborough have been suggested as locations with roads that head to London, although Peterborough did not gain a bridge until hundreds of years later. Stamford is another suggestion, which doesn’t work with modern boundaries (Stamford is in Lincolnshire), however it was one of the Five Boroughs, which made it a large and important centre, so it is possible that she was sent there for judgement. The hamlet of Ailsworth is less than a mile from the Nene and it possible that this was the location for her drowning, perhaps making use of the Roman Bridge, but we will never know. What is more telling is that the lands that the widow owned ended up in the hands of Alfsige, the man she was supposedly doing harm to. He gained a lot from her death, which makes it rather suspicious. Either way it makes for a fascinating insight into the lives and justice system of the 10th century in Peterborough.
References
1 A Rabin, Anglo-Saxon Women Before the Law: A Student Addition of Five Old English Lawsuits, Old English Newsletter, http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/print.php/essays/rabin41_3/Array
D. Hill, The Death of the Ailsworth Witch, Durobrivae:A Review of Nene Valley Archaeology, 1976, Vol 4, p 13,
https://peterborougharchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ailsworth-4-13.pdf
