A COMPUTER impression of how a £30,000 bronze memorial honouring the victims of Mistley's witchfinder general will look is set to be created.

Grace Carter, director of her own business We Are Aphra, launched a campaign to get a plaque or memorial in Manningtree or Mistley to mark the innocent deaths of residents accused of witchcraft.

More than 300 women are believed to have been executed for witchcraft between 1644 and 1646, many at the hands of Mistley’s infamous self-proclaimed witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins.

Grace has already hit her first crowdfunder target of £335 towards creating the memorial.

But she said a lot of work is still needed for the project, which is now estimated at about £30,000.

She added: "There's been a great response so far and a lot of the community came together for a meeting about the memorial with lots of ideas too, so it's all steam ahead."

Grace started the campaign after moving to Lawford in January and being surprised there wasn't any sort of landmark to remember those vilified and sent to their deaths for being witches.

Matthew Hopkins is thought to have lived at what is now the Mistley Thorn and held preliminary examinations of those accused of witchcraft at the White Hart, in Manningtree.

She added: "We'll need to apply for planning permission for the memorial, which I'll be doing in coming weeks.

"The location we'll be applying to have it installed in is the small triangular green space on South Street outside the Red Lion Pub.

"To have a good-sized memorial made from bronze, we need to fundraise circa £30,000 - as such we are going to look into larger fundraising opportunities.

"We're going to photoshop the memorial idea into the space so people can see how it would look ahead of fundraising."