With its seafront charm and rich maritime history, Barry certainly is a magical town. But did you know it was once home to the woman known as 'the mother of witchcraft'?

Born on 4 January 1922, Doreen Edith Dominy Valiente grew up in Surrey with her parents. It was here that she had her first psychic experiences. Aged seven, she became fascinated with the moon, and as she studied it from the garden, she experienced her first spiritual contact:

"I saw what people would call the world of everyday reality as unreal, and saw behind it something that was real and very potent. I saw the world of force behind the world of form.

"Just for a moment I had experience what was beyond the physical. It was beautiful, wonderful, it wasn't frightening. That, I think, shaped my life a lot," she wrote.

After moving to the New Forest with her mother, Doreen first began practicing magic aged 13, performing a spell to prevent her mother, who was working as a housekeeper, being harassed by a co-worker.

Doreen collected strands of the woman's hair and concocted a spell to stop the bullying, her knowledge coming from books in the local library. When the spell apparently worked, Doreen was sent away to convent school, but she left at 15 and refused to return.

During the Second World War, Doreen worked as a Foreign Office Civilian Temporary Senior Assistant Officer, working as a translator at Bletchley Park, but shortly after turning 19 she was sent to Barry to work as a secretary.

It was here that she met and married her first husband Joanis Vlachopoulos, a 32-year-old 'able seaman' serving with the Marchant Navy out of Cardiff.

This was a dangerous occupation: WWII had spread across Europe, and just six months after their wedding, Joanis was reported missing and presumed dead.

Despite her loss, Doreen continued to work short-term jobs in Wales, which were potentially a cover for intelligence work, until she moved to London in 1944.

Doreen met her second husband Casimiro Valiente, a refugee from the Spanish Civil War who was fighting with the French Free Forces against German occupation who was sent to England as an invalid. They were married for 28 years until Cosimiro died in April 1972.

After the war, Doreen and Cosimiro moved to Bournemouth, where her interest in the occult was rekindled.

She read an article in Illustrated magazine titled 'Witchcraft in Britain', discussing the recent opening of the Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft on the Isle of Man, it mentioned the museum's director, Cecil Williamson, and its "resident witch", Gerald Gardner.

Doreen and Gerald exchanged several letters, and in 1953 she was invited to a Midsummer ritual at Stonehenge where Doreen was initiated into Wicca.

After this she began collating and correcting historical inaccuracies in 'The Book of Shadows', which lead to her writing 'Queen of the Moon, Queen of the Stars', an invocation for use in a Yule ritual which was inspired by a Hebridean song, 'The Witches Rune', a chant for use while dancing in a circle and re-writing 'The Charge of the Goddess'.

Throughout her career, Doreen wrote regular articles for spiritual magazines, and became the second president of the Witchcraft Research Association.

In November 1970 she developed a full moon inauguration ritual for local branches of the Pagan Front to use and on May Day 1971 she chaired its first national meeting.

It was Doreen who developed the three principles that came to be central to the Pagan Front's interpretation of their religion: adherence to the Wiccan Rede, a belief in reincarnation, and a sense of kinship with nature.

In 1971 she appeared on the BBC documentary, Power of the Witch, which was devoted to Wicca. That same year, she was involved in the founding of the Pagan Front, a British pressure group that campaigned for the religious rights of Wiccans and other Pagans.

Doreen also became a member of the far-right groups National Front and the Northern League, but she was critical of the party's opposition to women's liberation, gay rights, and sex education. Her biographer, Phillip Heselton suggests that Doreen may have been reporting on these groups to the British intelligence agencies.

In 1997 Doreen discovered the Centre for Pagan Studies a Pagan organisation based in the Sussex hamlet of Maresfield that had been established in 1995. Befriending its founders, John Belham-Payne and his wife Julie Belham-Payne, she became the Centre's patron and gave several lectures for the group.

Doreen died in 1999, after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. However, her legacy within the occult world lives on.

The Doreen Valiente Foundation was set up in her name to continue the research into Wiccan traditions, her own research and publications are revered in the community, and her campaigning for religious rights all mean she is celebrated as 'the mother of modern witchcraft'.