Depositions from 1650–1664 state that the Miz Maze is where local witches used to meet. In 1879 the Dorset dialect poet William Barnes presented the Dorset Field Club with a paper in which he wrote "Many years ago I was told by a man of this neighbourhood that a corner of Leigh Common was called 'Witches Corner'; and long after that a friend gave me some old depositions on witchcraft ... one of the witches' sisterhood said that they sometimes met in Leigh Common." The last witch to be burned in England was reputed to have been arrested at a conference here in the 17th century and then executed at Maumbury Rings in Dorchester.