Where witches cut their wands and butcher birds impaled their prey

Slaughter Hill, Haslington, Cheshire Slaughter Hill may be a corruption of "Sloe Tree Hill", as blackthorns grow here - trees of ill omen, cantankerous crones

"The trees are undressing," as Thomas Hardy wrote in his poem Last Week of October. Today, burnt-toffee and russet leaves litter open farmland, one moment absinthe-green, the next treacle-dark as deep shadows pass over wet grass and the sun is switched on, off, on, off. A dog barks. Rooks kaah, kaah. There is the low moo of cattle from the farm. The scent is sour-apple-sweet with a hit of wood smoke.

I pass through the kissing gate festooned with spiders' webs, and stop to watch a murder of crows in an oak tree open their tatty-cloak wings and scatter in different directions.