Mother Shipton was a Yorkshire witch who prophesied about future events in the form of poems. On a summer night in 1488, a young girl gave birth to an illegitimate child in a cave in North Yorkshire. 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 ordinary carpenter, Toby Shipton, so feared and respected, not only in her home town of Knaresborough, but throughout the land and for centuries to come?