Ursula Southeil (c. 1488 - 1561) (possibly Ursula Sonthiel), better known as Mother Shipton, was an who is said to have made dozens of unusually accurate predictions, including the Great Plague of London the Spanish Armada and the "Great Fire of London>It is now generally accepted that the figure of Mother Shipton was largely a myth, and that the majority of her prophecies were composed by others in retrospect, after her death. Although her prophecies were apparently recorded in a series of diaries, the first publication of her work did not appear until 1641, eighty years after her death. The most notable book of her prophecies, edited by Richard Head, was published in 1684.
Head later admitted to having invented almost all Shipton's biographical details. He stated that she was born in Knaresborough Yorkshire, in a cave now known as "Mother Shipton's Cave" and was reputed to be hideously ugly - supposedly because she was fathered by Devil. Head claimed that she married Toby Shipton, a local carpenter, near York in 1512 and is said to have told fortunes and made predictions throughout her life.

What must be certain is that some 500 years ago a woman called Mistress Shipton lived here in Knaresborough and that when she spoke people believed her and passed her words on। Did she live somewhere near the Petrifying Well, where the strange little stream with its powers to turn to stone ran down into the River Nidd? Perhaps she walked here along what is now called The Long Walk, gathering herbs for her potions and healing remedies। Here in the cool quiet she could listen to the song of birds and sit upon a mossy stone to let the wild creatures approach. They were never cruel; they did not mock her. I think she must have been a remarkable woman, and I hope that her shade, wherever it lingers, is grateful for some understanding.

t is perhaps no coincidence that the voices of those who believe they see into the future are heard most often and remembered in times of great change. Our own time, not only at the beginning of a new century but of a millennium, is such a one. So it was too when on a summer night in 1488 a young girl gave birth to an illegitimate child in a cave in North Yorkshire. It was not the first such child to be born - certainly not the last. But this child was to grow into a woman whose name still carries the mysterious power of prophecy. Why? What was it that made Ursula Sontheil, later the wife of an ordinary carpenter called Toby Shipton, so feared and respected not only in her home town of Knaresborough but throughout the land - and for centuries to come? No one knows for certain the circumstances surrounding the birth of the child in a cave beside the River Nidd, on the other side of the river from the ancient castle of Knaresborough on its escarpment. For a century and a half everything known about the child who became Mother Shipton seems to have been passed on by word of mouth.