Worcestershire Folk Tales

Worcestershire Folk Tales gathers stories shaped by the county’s villages, countryside and industrial past. David Phelps ranges from mythical origins and Civil War battles to witchcraft trials, religious scandals and an unsolved twentieth-century murder, showing how local tradition preserves both history and imagination.

The collection includes reports of devils, ogres and ghosts, alongside tales of magical events connected with Worcestershire communities and landscape. Rural fears and superstitions sit beside stories influenced by industrial change, while vengeance, infidelity and murder disturb the county’s religious past. Phelps’s background as an oral storyteller gives the material a performance-minded quality, and illustrations accompany these accounts of local legends, remembered traditions and dark narratives.