Obituary: Patricia Crowther, Sheffield witch

Far from consorting with the devil, Crowther saw witchcraft as a force for good. One of its roles was to rid people of the evil spirits that caused sickness, for which she claimed a 90% success rate. The medieval village wise woman, to whom modern witches are successors, “was the national health service of her time”, she wrote in her book Covensense.

“Our religion is ageless and timeless,” she told the Sheffield Star in 1965. She described witchcraft as “a positive religion with strong moral standards”. She also called witches “pioneers of women’s liberation”, having been introduced to the idea of female divinity by reading The White Goddess by Robert Graves.

Crowther, who was Britain’s oldest witch when she died last month aged 97, declared on her 70th birthday that she was grandmother of the craft, one of the last surviving disciples of Gerald Gardner, who in the 1940s had revived Wicca worship through a coven held at a naturist camp in Bricket Wood, Hertfordshire. She also practised under the name of Thelema, an occult term that derives from the Greek for “will” or “desire”.

“Patricia was one of the leading lights of modern witchcraft,” said Sarah Kerr, president of the Pagan Federation. “She inspired countless pagans and witches here in the UK and around the world.” In a blog for the Controverscial website, George Knowles praised her “cool self-assurance and sense of humour” when dispelling myths, adding she was “unhesitant when answering religious bigots and critics”.

In 1988 she appeared on The James Whale Radio Show with two Christians, whom she castigated for saying her religion was evil. She observed it was their Church that had a problem with child abuse, while those under 25 were banned from Wicca rituals. She added that both religions had unbelievable myths. “I don’t see any difference between flying on a broomstick or walking on water,” she said.

Patricia Dawson was born in Sheffield in 1927. Her great-grandmother had been a herbalist and clairvoyant, and they lived next door to Madame Melba, a palm-reader. At school she had the leading role in a revue called The Legend of the Moon Goddess. A career in acting followed. Ian Lilleyman, her partner for 40 years, said theatre was “the best part of her life”.

In 1954 while she was performing in Birmingham, a fortune-teller told her that in two years she would meet a man called Arnold “over water” and marry him. In 1956, while flying to a job on the Isle of Wight, she met Arnold Crowther, a stage magician who had performed for princesses Elizabeth and Margaret at Buckingham Palace. He claimed to have prevented the German invasion of Britain by taking part in a ritual in the New Forest that convinced Adolf Hitler to turn his attention to Russia instead.

Aged 30, she consulted a hypnotist who regressed her back to previous lives, one of which was as a witch called Polly in 1670. During the session, “Polly” recited a number of rhyming spells through Patricia. Arnold introduced her to Gardner, who initiated her into Wicca on the Isle of Man in 1960. She described the ritual as a powerful trance experience in which she saw herself passing between the splayed legs of a line of howling naked women to be reborn as a priestess of the moon.

Five months later, Arnold and Patricia were “handfasted” in a nude, or “skyclad”, ceremony. The next day they had a civil ceremony at a registry office. The press noted the bride wore black velvet. They founded a Sheffield Wicca group in 1961, which drew the local headline “Witch seeks recruits for coven”, though they were picky about who they accepted. “Plenty asked but not many were initiated,” she said. Those who joined hoping for sexual kicks were “swiftly given the boot”.

In 1971, the Crowthers presented a series for BBC Radio Sheffield called A Spell of Witchcraft, which sought to answer questions about the craft. “It has nothing to do with satanism or black magic,” she said. “You can forget about witches with crooked noses and hunchbacks.” She argued Robin Hood was a male witch and dismissed as “sheer nonsense” claims that they practised voodoo.

In 2015, the recordings were posted on YouTube by the Centre for Pagan Studies. While the programmes caused little controversy, some of her talks did. Ashley Mortimer, former director of the CPS, said a church group prayed for her to be cancelled. “They didn’t object to a talk on witchcraft but they did object to a witch giving it,” he said.After her husband died in 1974, she continued to evangelise for witchcraft for more than 40 years, writing 11 books and giving many talks and media appearances. In 2014, at a Nottingham celebration of her life, she said her primary wish was that Wicca should “take its proper place among all the other religions of the world”.

Patricia Crowther, witch, was born on 14 October 1927, and died on 24 September 2025, aged 97

Photograph Mirrorpix/Getty