Malkin Tower

[5] It has also been suggested that the name was a combination of mal and kin as a slight to the residents of Malkin Tower,[3][4] which local historian Arthur Douglas considers unlikely owing to the poor education of people in the area at that time.

[4] Another possibility is a corruption of malt kiln,[4][6] which is supported by a claim made by Alizon Device that the family of Anne Whittle, also known as Chattox, had broken into their fire house.

[11] Historian W. R. Mitchell suggests that it was originally a small farm building, perhaps a shelter for fodder or livestock, which was converted into poor-quality living accommodation.

[23] Friends of the Demdike family met at Malkin Tower on 10 April 1612, allegedly to plot the escape of the four gaoled women by blowing up Lancaster Castle.

[25] The official account of the trials written by Thomas Potts, clerk to the court, in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster mentions Malking Tower many times, but only describes it as being in the Forest of Pendle, a former royal forest[e] that covered a considerable area south and east of Pendle Hill, extending almost to the towns of Burnley, Colne and Padiham.

One contender is in the civil parish of Blacko, on the site of present-day Malkin Tower Farm;[29] since the 1840s claims have been made that old masonry found in a field wall is from the remains of the building.

[3][30] In The Lancashire Witch-Craze, Jonathan Lumby conjectures that the building was situated on the moors surrounding Blacko Hill, near to an old road between Colne and Gisburn.

But neither the deeds of Sadler's Farm, which date back to the 17th century, nor contemporary maps of the region mention Malkin Tower or any fields in which it may have stood.

[12] A potential candidate for the lost Malkin Tower was announced in December 2011, after water engineers unearthed a 17th-century cottage with a mummified cat sealed in the walls,[h] close to Lower Black Moss reservoir near Barley.