The Museum ofWitchcraft and Magic

Cecil Williamson, a folk magician, founded his collection on the Isle of Man in 1951 and brought it to rest at Boscastle's harbour mouth in 1960, by way of Windsor and Bourton-on-the-Water. Graham King bought the museum at midnight on Halloween 1996 — and gave it away, again at Halloween, in 2013, to the designer Simon Costin, who also directs the Museum of British Folklore. In between, the 2004 Boscastle flood tore through the building; most of the collection was saved, and the museum reopened the following spring. The holdings now run past three thousand objects and seven thousand books — the largest collection of witchcraft and folk-magic material anywhere — shown seven days a week from Easter to the end of October. It is a private, independent museum: no public subsidy, and no Trust behind it.