Clutterbuck, Dorothy

The person was supposed to have initiated Gerald Gardner into a surviving witches coven based in the New Forest of England.


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Old Dorothy Clutterbuck  (1880-1951)
Dorothy Clutterbuck was the witch who initiated Gerald B. Gardner into the Old Religion during September 1939.  She was then the head of an old time witches coven, the last remains of a coven directly descendant from one of the famed “Nine Covens” founded by Old George Pickingill.  
So little was known about Old Dorothy that for many years skeptics and historians had believed that Gardner had invented her solely to justify his belief that there was still in existence practicing witches of the Old Religion.  In 1980 Doreen Valiente set out to disprove these allegations, and after two years of research succeeded; birth and death records proved that Old Dorothy was indeed a real person.
(from George Knowles)