A BID to set up the UK’s first official Wiccan temple in Reddish is living on a prayer after the Government refused to recognise the building as a genuine place of worship.

Sandra Davis, high priestess at the Crystal Cauldron, on Gorton Road, is appealing the decision she claims is discriminatory.

She applied to have her business - a shop and meeting room - recognised as a temple but this week the General Register Office, part of the Home Office, refused.

A rejection letter, which has left the congregation outraged, stated that Wicca, a form of Paganism, is incompatible with the ancient Places of Worship Act 1855.

Mysterious pits shed light on forgotten witches of the West

Evidence of pagan rituals involving swans and other birds in the Cornish countryside in the 17th century has been uncovered by archaeologists.

Since 2003, 35 pits at the site in a valley near Truro have been excavated containing swan pelts, dead magpies, unhatched eggs, quartz pebbles, human hair, fingernails and part of an iron cauldron.

The finds have been dated to the 1640s, a period of turmoil in England when Cromwellian Puritans destroyed any links to pre-Christian pagan England. It was also a period when witchcraft attracted the death sentence.

Helen Duncan, from Callander, served nine months in Holloway prison in 1944 after telling a seance a warship had sunk, before the news was made public.

She was convicted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 for pretending to exercise or use any kind of "witchcraft" or "sorcery" to tell fortunes.

The call to pardon Mrs Duncan was put before Holyrood's petitions committee.