In our latest author profile, historian and archaeologist Jennie Lee Cobban tells us how she came to pen her latest work, The Lure of the Lancashire Witches
Jennie Lee Cobban was brought up in Whalley, Lancashire and attended Clitheroe Royal Grammar School for Girls before gaining a B.A. Honours degree in Ancient History and Archaeology from the University of Manchester in 1974. After working in television, public relations and teaching, she moved to north London in 1983. 
Here, while raising a family, she spent twenty years helping to run Barnet Museum as Archaeology Officer and acting as a liaison point between local heritage groups, the Museum of London and English Heritage. During this time she wrote numerous articles for local publications, assisted television companies in historical programme research and wrote two local interest books. She was also thrilled to have the opportunity to work alongside her hero and mentor, the late Dr Ralph Merrifield – pioneer of the academic study of the archaeology of ritual and magic – in the research of apotropaic artefacts designed to protect domestic and farm buildings in London and the North West.
Jennie’s first book, Geoffrey de Mandeville and London’s Camelot (1997) came about as a result of people constantly regaling her with ghost stories when she was evaluating threatened archaeological sites prior to their excavation! So in 1997 she decided to gather together the information she had collected over the years and document the ghosts and folklore of Barnet while at the same time taking the opportunity to describe the historical and archaeological mysteries of the area. During her research she got to know several famous characters in the annals of contemporary witchcraft and magic – notably the Wiccan elder and author Lois Bourne and the late Cecil Williamson, occultist and owner of the Museum of Witchcraft at Boscastle. Her second book, 800 Years of Barnet Market (with Doreen Willcocks, 1999) was written as a special anniversary contribution to the town’s official celebrations of the granting of Chipping Barnet’s market charter by King John in 1199.
Jennie moved back to Lancashire in 2002 to look after her dad and has spent the last ten years re-immersing herself in the history of Pendle and its environs. In 2004 she published Wall of Silence – an in-depth study of the unsolved murder of her great-uncle Jim Dawson at Bashall Eaves, near Clitheroe, in 1934.
Jennie has been fascinated by the witches of Lancashire since she was a little girl, and has spent her entire adult life gathering information about the history and archaeology of witchcraft and magic. A small part of this research is presented in her fourth and latest book, The Lure of the Lancashire Witches. She is presently experimenting with a blog which she is hoping will provide a general discussion platform for the 400th anniversary of the Pendle witches, Samlesbury witches and the witch of Windle. [link: http://lancashirewitchcraftnewsandviews.blogspot.com/]
Her other interests include film and television, literature, gardening and animal welfare. She can regularly be found at the RSPCA charity shop in Clitheroe where she enjoys working as part of the dedicated volunteer force. She has two sons, Daniel and Edward and two cats, Pyewackett and Cleopatra – not to mention five very spoilt ex-battery hens who, over the past six months, have taken enormous pleasure in transforming Jennie’s once beautiful garden into a mud-splattered war zone and eating all her plants.
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The Lure of the Lancashire Witches is out now, £8.95 direct from Carnegie Publishing.
