East Mersea
East Mersea is a scattered village and civil parish on Mersea Island in the English county of Essex.The grave of Sarah Wrench, by the North wall of the chancel at St. Edmund's Church in East Mersea is unusual for an English grave because it is covered by a mortsafe, a protective cage used at the time in Scotland to protect corpses from graverobbers.
Richard Jones, in Myths of Britain and Ireland, refers to popular speculation that Sarah Wrench was a witch, and that the cage was designed to keep her from escaping her grave after death. Although East Anglia was at one time known for witch trials, this was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not the mid-nineteenth.
