Kilkenny’s Toil & Trouble presents BRIDGET — film screening and Q&A

In March 1895, Bridget Cleary, a 26-year-old seamstress from Ballyvadlea, Co. Tipperary, was burned to death by her husband, who had convinced himself, and then her family and neighbours, that she had been taken by the fairies and replaced with a changeling. The trial that followed in Clonmel was reported around the world, and the case became known internationally as the last witch burning in Ireland. She was buried at night, without mourners. In the parishes of Cloneen and Drangan, the story went largely unspoken for more than a century.

Bridget is the first film by Anne Williamson, who grew up two townlands from where it happened, hearing the story at her grandfather’s fireside. Co-written with Brian Andrew Clancy and performed by local actors from the Fionn MacCumhaill Players, it sets a present-day framing in colour against a black-and-white retelling of Bridget’s final days, shot by cinematographer Louis Buggy of Kilkenny’s Diceman Films. It carries an original ballad, The Maid of Old Clooneen, written and sung by Chris Kavanagh. In 2026 it won Best First-Time Female Director at the Indie X Film Fest in Los Angeles.

Five and a half centuries after Petronilla de Meath was burned at Kilkenny, a woman was still being killed for what her neighbours believed about her. The screening is followed by a Q&A with Anne Williamson.

Supported by Kilkenny County Council and Tourism Ireland.

Kilkenny is a Tourism Ireland Home of Halloween Destination 2024–2027.