Lamplugh, a scattered parish near Cockermouth in west Cumberland, offers an unusually direct documentary trace of genuine local witch belief actually being acted upon: its own parish register recorded seven separate deaths between 1656 and 1663 attributed directly by the community to bewitchment, a span corresponding precisely to the wider peak of witch anxiety felt across both Cumberland and Westmorland during this same turbulent period.
Local tradition connected to these seven documented deaths holds that three women were actually drowned by their own neighbours as suspected witches, an entirely extra-judicial killing rather than any formal trial and lawful execution, and a considerably darker and more disturbing outcome than the more visible, at least formally conducted court cases recorded separately at Winton and Appleby elsewhere in this collection.
The genuine parish-register detail, seven documented deaths spanning the specific dates 1656 to 1663, gives this particular case a considerably stronger documentary anchor than most of the folklore recorded throughout this wider survey, though the drowning of the three women is itself reported only as local tradition rather than as any actual entry within the same official register, and no individual names have been identified for any of the three victims in this entry.
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