Fairfield Halls, the municipal venue, hosts an event which, one year, saw cages set up outside. People entered the cages so that they could stroke and touch tame wolves, born and bred in captivity. Whilst this was going on, others inside the building were attending brief classes on subjects such as making a magick wand or knot magick, listening to a famous psychic who had a television show or watching morris sides dance as the spectators drank mead.

The overarching event that encompassed all of these things was called Witchfest. It has been running since at least 2008, with most of the meetings being held in Fairfield Halls in Croydon. During that time there have also been shops in the town itself, some of them units in larger buildings, that have tapped into the lifestyle ancillary to pagans and those who incorporate magick into their lives in one way or another. One or two pubs, whilst not being outwardly pagan, operate in a parallel way, appealing to Goths and souls with a similar direction of social travel. The question began to tickle my mind; why Croydon? Outwardly the town has little about it to suggest itself to aficionados of alternative culture. Like its polar opposite twin, Romford, Croydon is a busy, modern shopping centre on the outskirts of Greater London, sporting one-way systems, railway stations, modern shopping centres, pubs, clubs, and supporting extensive suburbs. It’s all very mainstream and consumer-friendly. Also, like Romford, it’s a town of surprising antiquity given the contemporary accoutrements built over it. There may have been a Roman staging-post for officials but, at the very least (and possibly of some surprise to modern dwellers), Croydon built up around an estate owned by the Archbishops of Canterbury. The Church ran the town for centuries. Decisions made by the archbishops were responsible for turning the former estate into a bustling town, such as starting a market in the grounds of the manor house on the estate; a manor house that became the holiday home of subsequent archbishops. The current shopping mall, the Whitgift Centre, is actually named after John Whitgift, one of the Archbishops of Canterbury who helped to shape the growing town. There is also the fact that an appointment in the Church of England in Croydon is a positive thing for aspiring clergy.

There are obvious reasons as to why Croydon was chosen to host Witchfest that spring to mind almost unbidden, such as financial; somewhere on the edge of London is going to be cheaper than, say the Albert Hall, personal; the organisers live there and they won’t have to go far to set it up and to attend, convenience; the organisation’s base is already there so its helpers are already on the spot. The shops selling ephemera connected to the goth/industrial/wiccan lifestyle could be explained by them being peripheral to the annual extravaganza of Witchfest and orbiting around the organisation that runs it, the Children of Artemis, for the rest of the year. What interests me is the continuation of activity associated with spirituality that runs like a thread throughout the course of the long history of Croydon, despite the burgeoning consumerism that also clings to it for almost as long a period. The sacred and the profane; it is an old theme summed up in Britain where the village pub is near the church.

I suppose that what I wonder is whether, somehow, the long amount of time that an organisation dedicated to the ineffable has imprinted upon the locale, a genius loci, as it were? Have the centuries of influence and the shaping hand of the Church of England left a residue on this otherwise pedestrian part of the world that has been picked up on by pagans and/or the spiritually unaligned and amplified back at us? The problem is that these are all intangibles. No-one can point at any empirical evidence and say “This proves that the Church left pools of holy energy to be utilised by whoever came after”. Spirit, after all, is materially intangible and defies proof. The materialistic world we occupy will only say that the Church was in Croydon for centuries and now pagans are here because it’s a bit dull in the suburbs and being a witch is more glamorous than collecting stamps. I will continue to sniff around the edges of what I consider to be a conundrum because there is something that I cannot shake about it all.