Also called apotropaic marks, hexafoil, daisy wheel, ritual protection marks
Compass-drawn flowers, interlaced lines and Marian VV marks scratched near doors, windows and hearths to block evil from entering a building.
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Take care: Never scratch marks into listed buildings, churches, caves or historic sites; that is vandalism and often a crime. Work only on your own board, and keep compass points away from fingers.
Two interlocking Vs are read as Virgo Virginum, Virgin of Virgins, an appeal to Mary. They are among the most common marks in churches and houses, carved on door frames, beams and chimney pieces.
Conservation work at Knole found marks on joists and around a fireplace in a room prepared for James I. Tree-ring dating put the timbers at 1605 to 1606, the time of the Gunpowder Plot, and the marks appear to have been made before the wood was installed.
In 2019 cave explorers at Creswell Crags noticed hundreds of protection marks on the walls of a limestone cave, the largest group known in Britain. VV marks, mazes and boxes cluster around cracks and holes, suggesting people tried to seal something in rather than keep it out.
Teardrop-shaped scorch marks made by holding a candle or taper to wood were long thought to be accidents. Experiments and their careful placement near openings suggest many were made on purpose, perhaps to fight fire with fire.
Ritual protection marks are found in thousands of English buildings: barns, cottages, churches and great houses. They cluster at entrances, windows and fireplaces, the places a household felt most exposed. The daisy wheel or hexafoil, a six-petalled figure drawn with a compass, is the most common. Carpenters and masons had the tools and skill to make them, and many marks were cut while the timber was still on the ground.
Historic England launched a public appeal in 2016 to record examples, and the National Trust has catalogued marks across its houses. The researcher Timothy Easton spent decades studying them in Suffolk, and Brian Hoggard places them beside witch bottles and concealed shoes as part of one wider system of house protection. Some marks are hard to tell apart from setting-out lines or decoration, so researchers judge each by its placement and form.
A sealed bottle of pins, nails and personal traces hidden in a house to trap or turn back harmful magic aimed at the people living there.
An Icelandic magical stave of eight trident-tipped arms around a central point, drawn to make the bearer fearsome to enemies and shielded from harm.
A worn shoe hidden in a chimney, wall or roof during building work, to guard the household and carry the luck and shape of its owner into the house.
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