The Marks Made to Keep Evil Out

I do not generally look at scratches on an old wall and assume somebody was attempting to protect themselves from supernatural forces, but I am beginning to think I have been giving historic graffiti considerably less attention than it deserves.

Across Britain, symbols have been found cut into doors, fireplaces, roof timbers, walls, barns, churches and caves. Some are simple circles. Others look like flowers made from overlapping arcs, five-pointed stars or combinations of letters. They are often described as apotropaic marks, from a Greek word meaning to avert or turn away evil, although the rather more memorable term is witch marks. Historic England describes them as markings intended to protect buildings and their occupants from witches, evil spirits or other harmful influences, particularly from around the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century.

The name is slightly misleading. These were not marks supposedly made by witches. Quite the opposite.

After witch bottles and shoes hidden inside walls, I am beginning to understand that our ancestors occasionally viewed buildings as requiring rather more supernatural security than ours. A door was not simply a door if something unpleasant might come through it.

The difficulty is working out which scratches were doing the protecting.

FIRST, NOT EVERY SCRATCH IS A WITCH MARK

Historic buildings are covered in marks because people have always marked buildings.

Carpenters numbered timbers so they knew how a frame fitted together. Masons left working marks. Merchants used symbols. Owners scratched names and dates into plaster. People doodled. Someone inevitably carved their initials somewhere they were not supposed to because apparently that instinct predates school desks by several centuries.

When Historic England asked the public to report suspected ritual protection marks, it received more than six hundred responses. Some were convincing examples. Others turned out to be decoration, historic graffiti, shipping marks, merchants' symbols, levelling marks or ordinary carpenters' numbers. More than one submission involved Roman numerals scratched into structural timber because that was how carpenters labelled the pieces before assembling the frame.

Which is useful to remember before declaring every mysterious IIII on an old roof beam evidence that somebody was fighting Satan.

Context matters. The shape matters, but so does where it appears, whether it is repeated, what surrounds it and whether there is any practical reason for the mark to exist. Sometimes the safest answer is simply that we do not know.

There is one design, however, that keeps appearing.

THE DAISY WHEEL

The daisy wheel, usually called a hexafoil by researchers, is a six-lobed design made from overlapping circles. With a pair of compasses or dividers it can be constructed quite easily, beginning with one circle and using its radius to create the surrounding petals.

Historic England found hexafoils were by far the most common markings reported during its survey. They appear on stone, timber, plaster and brick in houses, churches and farm buildings, sometimes as one small design and sometimes as elaborate groups of interlocking circles. They can be found close to fireplaces, doors and windows, but they also appear on furniture and other objects.

That creates a problem because the same geometry could have other purposes. Hexafoils can be decorative, and they were also used as drawing or geometry exercises. A carpenter with dividers already in his hand did not necessarily become concerned about demons halfway through making a roof.

The protective interpretation is nevertheless widely accepted for many examples, particularly when they appear in clusters or in locations associated with the boundaries of a building. One theory suggests the continuous or interlocking line was meant to confuse or entrap a harmful force. That is an interpretation rather than an instruction somebody conveniently left behind for us, but similar ideas appear in discussions of other endless-line designs.

Essentially, if you find one neat little flower scratched onto a chest, we should be careful. If somebody has covered the area around a doorway with them, I am paying attention.

DOORS, WINDOWS AND CHIMNEYS KEEP COMING UP

One of the strongest patterns is location.

Historic England's public survey found a noticeable preference for marks close to openings, especially above fireplaces and beside doors and windows. Those are the same parts of buildings that keep appearing in discussions of concealed shoes, witch bottles and other ritual deposits.

The logic is not difficult to understand. A doorway allowed something from outside to enter. So did a window. A chimney created a direct route from the outside world into the heart of the house.

If you accepted that harmful supernatural influences could enter a building, those were sensible places to concentrate your efforts.

There is a lovely example at Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. A pair of daisy wheels survives near the staircase leading into the cellar, probably dating from the early seventeenth century when the property was being leased to a publican.

The cellar stored beer and I respect the priorities.

Similar marks appear on barns, often around entrances. At places such as the medieval tithe barn at Bradford-on-Avon, hexafoils have been found carved into the building itself. Grain represented food, money and months of labour, so a belief that the barn needed protection is hardly difficult to understand.

We should not assume that every person making these marks imagined precisely the same threat. Protection from witches, bad luck, fire, disease or something less clearly defined could overlap. The important thing is that, in some buildings, people appear to have treated spaces as more vulnerable than others.

That theme keeps following us through this shelf.

MARY APPEARS IN THE WALLS AS WELL

Not every proposed protection mark is geometric.

Combinations such as M, AM and joined VV shapes appear frequently in historic buildings and have traditionally been interpreted as Marian marks. AM may refer to Ave Maria, while the double V has been read as Virgo Virginum, Virgin of Virgins.

We need some caution here too. Historic England notes that the interpretation is disputed, particularly because an upright or inverted series of Vs can resemble ordinary letters or other working marks. Even when the marking is deliberate, we cannot automatically know what the person who carved it intended.

There are, however, some wonderful Scottish examples.

At Uamh nan Cailleach, the Nuns' Cave near Carsaig on Mull, Historic Environment Scotland records a remarkable mixture of carvings spanning different periods: early Christian crosses, a cinquefoil, a ship, masons' marks, dates and two double-V symbols. HES interprets the latter as Virgo Virginum and therefore as apotropaic marks intended to protect against malevolent spirits. It also notes that the phenomenon is not especially well studied in Scotland, making their presence in a cave already containing Christian carvings particularly interesting.

There are potential examples at the Palace of Holyrood house too. Historic Environment Scotland has highlighted linked letters resembling AMV on a main door and a circular petal-like mark inside the door to the King's closets. The interpretation is cautious, and the markings may belong to the reign of James VI rather than Mary, Queen of Scots.

That possibility is particularly interesting because James VI's fear of witchcraft was hardly theoretical. Following his return from Denmark in 1590, he became convinced that witches had attempted to kill him and Anne of Denmark by raising storms at sea, and he became directly involved in the North Berwick witch investigations.

It does not prove that James personally requested a protective mark on a door. It does make Holyrood a rather interesting place to find one.

More broadly, these religious symbols remind us that protection against supernatural danger was not necessarily understood as something separate from Christianity. Invoking Mary, saying prayers, using charms and marking a building could exist within the same mental world.

Our categories are often tidier than theirs were.

THEN THERE ARE THE BURN MARKS

Some of the strangest proposed protection marks do not look like symbols at all.

Old timber buildings often contain narrow, teardrop-shaped scorch marks traditionally explained as accidental burns left by candles or tapers. For years that seemed perfectly reasonable.

Then people started looking more closely.

Some burns occur on roof timbers, beneath floors and in other locations where leaving a candle pressed against the wood would make little practical sense. Experimental work has also suggested that the characteristic marks are surprisingly difficult to reproduce accidentally. Historic England therefore considers it likely that at least some were deliberately created, perhaps while a building was under construction.

One proposed explanation is protection against fire or lightning.

Yes. Possibly by deliberately burning the building a little bit.

There is a certain logic to it within sympathetic forms of belief: controlled fire used against destructive fire, rather like fighting like with like. Historic England's research into historic farm buildings notes examples of these burned ritual marks and interprets them as a form of protection against fire.

We still need restraint. A scorch mark in a centuries-old timber building may be nothing more mysterious than a scorch mark. Several deliberate, similarly shaped burns in inaccessible locations are a different question.

HORROR FILMS HAVE BEEN VERY UNFAIR TO THE PENTANGLE

The five-pointed star now has an unfortunate habit of appearing in films approximately six minutes before somebody opens a basement door they were specifically told not to open.

Historically, its meaning was far less sinister.

Historic England notes that pentangles were used during the medieval period as protective symbols and that their continuous form could be understood as an endless line. Examples have been found around church doorways as well as in other historic buildings.

The fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight gives us an especially useful reminder of how different its associations could be. Gawain's shield carries a golden pentangle which the poem calls an endless knot and connects with truth, Christian devotion and a series of five virtues.

So, if you find a five-pointed star scratched beside the doorway of a medieval church, the appropriate response is not necessarily to summon a priest. The person who carved it may already have been thinking along those lines.

Symbols are awkward things. The shape can survive for centuries while the meaning around it changes completely.

THEN THEY FOUND THEM DEEP INSIDE CRESWELL CRAGS

This subject becomes considerably more atmospheric once we leave houses and go underground.

In 2019, researchers announced the discovery of what Historic England described as the largest concentration of protective marks then known in British caves at Creswell Crags, on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

Creswell was already extraordinary. Its caves preserve evidence of human activity stretching back tens of thousands of years and contain Britain's only known Ice Age cave art. Much later visitors added another layer to the site.

The markings identified there include double Vs, letters, diagonal lines, boxes, mazes and other designs. Historic England interpreted some as Marian marks and others as devices possibly intended to capture or obstruct evil. Dense groups occur around holes and darker spaces within the cave system.

At this point I would like to reaffirm my support for academic curiosity while making it clear that if several generations of people have covered the entrance to a dark hole inside a cave with protective symbols, I personally do not need to know what is down there.

Some mysteries can retain their funding.

The Creswell discovery matters because it reminds us that these practices were not exclusively about defending homes. A particular landscape, cave or opening could itself be understood as uncertain or dangerous.

People marked the boundary. Whatever they believed lay beyond it, they evidently preferred it to remain there.

DID THE PEOPLE MAKING THEM ALWAYS KNOW WHY?

Probably not, and this is where the concealed shoes become useful again.

Customs can survive their explanations. One person learns to make a mark because a parent or craftsman taught them. The next generation repeats it. The meaning shifts from protection against witches to protection from bad luck, fire or something less specific. Eventually somebody continues doing it because that is simply what has always been done in that place.

We still behave like this.

People touch wood, cross their fingers and avoid putting new shoes on a table without necessarily being able to give a historical account of the belief behind it. The action can remain long after the original explanation has disappeared.

There is evidence that protective markings could also be made at very different points in the life of a building. In one response studied by Historic England, a daisy wheel had been cut into green timber before the wood dried and cracked, suggesting it was made around the time of construction. Another example appeared to have been added only after its timber had aged.

The same shape could therefore be added by completely different people, decades apart, possibly for reasons that were no longer identical.

That is much messier than giving every symbol a label. It is also much more believable.

WHAT CAN WE ACTUALLY SAY?

We can say that deliberate markings associated with ritual protection exist in historic British buildings and landscapes.

We can say that hexafoils are particularly common, that proposed Marian marks, pentangles and deliberate burn marks appear alongside them, and that many are concentrated around entrances, windows, hearths and other boundaries. We can also say that closely similar shapes sometimes had ordinary functions, which is why location and context matter as much as appearance. Historic England's own survey contained both convincing ritual markings and plenty of things that turned out to be carpentry, decoration or graffiti.

What we cannot do is stand in front of every scratched flower and confidently reconstruct the thoughts of the person holding the knife.

Sometimes the evidence will only take us so far, but it doesn’t make the marks less interesting. Somebody stood beside a doorway, fireplace, barn entrance or cave wall and cut a shape into the surface. In certain cases, they repeated it, placed it beside other protective symbols or chose a part of the building already associated with vulnerability. The mark stayed there after the person who made it had gone.

Then centuries passed. The room changed use. The beam darkened. Paint and plaster came and went. Families lived and died around it.

The little scratched pattern remained. Most of us would probably walk straight past. I certainly have, which is now going to make me unbearable in every historic building we visit because I will be examining the doorframes instead of looking where I am going, and if I find a daisy wheel above the fireplace, I am leaving it alone.

We have spent far too much time on this shelf learning what previous occupants hid, buried and scratched into their houses for me to become the woman who decides the protective mark can probably come off.

It has managed perfectly well without my input so far.