HIGHWAYMEN, witches, family murder plots and abductions - all in East Lancashire!

Go back several centuries and this is what you will find from the village records of the goings-on in Pendle and the Ribble Valley.

These murders and crimes have been brought together in a new book by Barrowford author and illustrator Jacqueline Davitt called Murder and Crime: Pendle and the Ribble Valley.

It explores some of the more famous incidents as well as many that are not so well known over the last 400 years, going back to the Pendle Witches in 1612.

The 58-year-old, who started writing after taking early retirement eight years ago, said: "I wanted to share with the people who know the areas, as well as those who don't, the weird and wonderful goings-on that have not been told before.

"There are some pretty gruesome things but my favourites to write about were the oddities. They were the most interesting as they seem so ridiculous in modern day society.

"I really enjoyed visiting the areas I knew so well from being a child and discovering what had happened there so many years earlier. It's hard to believe."

Her favourite snippets include stories from 17th century Hurst Green and Clitheroe, where on the lanes surrounding the towns, you would once have found highwayman Ned King.

Dressed in a red coat and frilled white shirt he accosted his victims when the stagecoaches took their rests.

One popular rest spot was by the Punchbowl Inn and it was rumoured the then landlord would inform King of wealthy customers.

He was caught hiding in the inn's hay barn and was hung for his crimes.

The great abduction case is another untold wonder, about a man who abducted his wife in Clitheroe in 1891 and when the police were informed an officer told the concerned family member that they would not get involved as it was a domestic matter. Edmund Jackson abducted Emily and locked her in his house in Blackburn after she had refused to move in with him following their wedding.

And her favourite oddities include a Barrowford man arrested for talking too loudly' in 1929. Others include; tossing coins and making bets in the street, vagrancy, washing on a Sunday and two men who went to court for jumping on the pavement' accompanied by a group of 16 others charged with congregating on the pavement and watching the jumping'.

The book is published by Tempest Publishing, priced £9.99.

It is available locally from Pendle Heritage Centre, Colne Bookshop, Microtech Office Supplies, Nelson and Junction 12, Brierfield, the Information Centre, Blackburn and Oswaldtwistle Mills, as well as online from Amazon.