The Ipswich Witches

They did it. They blimmin’ went and did it. Thursday just gone, October 9th 2025, The Ipswich Witches (@ipswichspeedway) finally broke a 26-year wait to reclaim British speedway’s biggest prize. In front of a bumper Foxhall crowd, the Witches edged out the Leicester Lions 46–43 on the night and 93–86 on aggregate to win their first Premiership title since 1998. Former world champion Jason Doyle top-scored with 10 points, sealing the club’s 11th major trophy since its foundation in 1950. For team boss Ritchie Hawkins, who took charge when Ipswich sat bottom of the second division, it was the culmination of a decade’s persistence. “There’s massive expectation here,” he told BBC Radio Suffolk. “Every week we have the best crowds in the country and the best supporters.”

For those of you who may not know what on earth I am talking about this is Speedway. Four riders. Four laps. Dirt Track. One Gear. No Brakes.

Steering? Sort of. They call it broadsiding – jumping and cutting into the dirt to get leverage to propel them forwards – and ahead of their rivals. 2 riders in each team. 3 points or first, 2 for second and 1 for third. 15 heats.

On the straights, they can reach speeds of up to 70 mph, kicking up a haze of shale (coating nearby spectators) and noise that defines a summer night at Foxhall and can be heard all across Ipswich.

The sport began in Australia in the early 1920s, spreading rapidly to Britain in 1928 when promoter Johnnie Hoskins and a group of riders introduced it at High Beech in Essex. By the 1930s, speedway had swept across northern Europe, with Britain, Poland, Sweden, and Denmark becoming its modern strongholds.

Speedway came to Ipswich in the post-war reconstruction boom. Foxhall Stadium was purpose-built for the sport in 1950, and after a few postponed meetings the track opened officially on 14 May 1951 when Ipswich faced Yarmouth in a challenge match. The club joined the Southern League the following year and adopted the nickname “Witches” – more on which in a second.

Through the decades, Ipswich have been one of the most iconic teams in British speedway. Their crisp black jackets with fluorescent yellow trim stand out from a mile away and are by the far the best dressed Speedway team in England.

They dominated the 1970s and 1980s, winning league titles in 1975, 1976, and 1984, and adding a string of Knockout Cups. The Louis family became synonymous with the club: John Louis, an Ipswich native and former England international, led the team to success in the 1970s before later managing the national side. His son picked up the family tradition and Chris Louis starred through the 1990s, helping Ipswich to a famous treble in 1998 alongside Tony Rickardsson, Tomasz Gollob, and Scott Nicholls. Today Chris promotes the club with team manager Hawkins, continuing a family legacy that stretches back half a century.

So then, on to the badge and that name… The Witches.

Ipswich and the surrounding East Anglia countryside was one of the most active centres of witch trials in seventeenth-century England, a time when fear, religion, and politics collided to spook the people into vigilante populist nonsense...(hmm).

In an age of poor harvests, plague, and civil war, belief in the Devil’s work ran deep. It was here, in 1645, that two figures—Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General, and a local woman named Mary Lakeland, also called Mother Lakeland—crossed paths in one of the darkest episodes in Suffolk’s story.

Hopkins, a lawyer’s son from just across the Essex border in picturesque Manningtree, claimed he had been sent by God to uncover the Devil’s subversion of the good lady (and some men) folk of England. With his assistant John Stearne, he toured towns across Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, charging local authorities for each “investigation.” The pair used brutal methods—sleep deprivation, endless questioning, and the so-called swimming test where suspects were bound and thrown into water. Dozens were hanged after dubious trials and more than a hundred in total would die.

Let’s not get bogged down into the economics of Hopkin’s trade… there is a sort of inevitability to finding someone guilty when you’re being paid to do so… A bit like how that feller in Scooby Doo always dresses up as a ghost to lower house prices…

Ipswich, wealthy from exporting cloth out into Europe, was high on Hopkin’s list of potential markets. In August 1645, five women from the town were accused of witchcraft. Records show Hopkins and his agents were involved and received payment from the town council (I strangely suspect this would probably go down better on local Facebook comment threads than some of the more innocent things the Council tries to do today…)

One of those accused, Mary Lackland (or Lakeland – different accounts use different spelling), faced a fate even worse than hanging. Mary Lackland was an elderly widow of a barber. She fit the stereotype of a witch—outspoken, eccentric, old, poor, and alone… on reflection, and if that’s the criteria, I rather fear for my wife once I’m gone.

But I digress, Mark Lackland confessed (under some significant ‘pressure’ from Hopkin’s men) to making a pact with the Devil and to commanding animal “familiars” who harmed neighbours that had crossed her – in particular a dog (I mean come on… what are the odds of a dog hanging around…)

Among the charges, she was accused of killing her own husband by witchcraft—a crime defined not only as witchcraft but as petty treason (love that concept…).

It was this that sealed her fate. While most convicted witches were hanged, those guilty of petty treason were burned at the stake. On 9 September 1645, Mary Lakeland was taken from Ipswich Gaol to Rushmere Heath, just beyond the town. There she was tied to a stake and burned alive. I imagine if this happened today the kids riding the Route 66 bus that drives past the heath probably wouldn’t even look up from their phones to notice.

Mary’s death marked the last execution for witchcraft in Ipswich, and one of the last burnings in England.

Why did the good subjects of Ipswich get wrapped up such hysteria? And without even a vital meme promoting such nonsense in sight?

The mid-1600s were years of turmoil: civil war between king and parliament, economic hardship, bloody French pirates periodically raiding the coastline and stealing ice creams from the promenades, disease, and religious extremism.

Witchcraft offered a simple answer to complex fears. Misfortune could be blamed on neighbours rather than nature. Women—especially widows or healers—were easy targets. They were such simple minded fools back then, imagine if we simply blamed all our problems on one grou…. Oh.

However, Hopkins himself died only two years after all of this, in 1647 – supposedly of of tuberculosis, aged 27. Was this curse? Did Lackland have the last laugh? Do the Ipswich Witches still live on?

They do indeed. Although some may feel that they can probably be better seen in the Town today on a Friday night falling out of Vokda Revs – the true Witches – have gone from fire to floodlights and settled in Foxhall woods.

A symbol that once evoked fear and division, that badge now unites. The Foxhall crowds that roar on the Witches every summer celebrate resilience, not superstition; determination, not persecution. The broomsticks are steel frames now, broadsiding around that track to glory.

The Ipswich Witches have been around for centuries.

Come on you Witches. Let’s win it again next year.