Researchers who have investigated Gardner's New Forest coven claim, including Doreen Valiente, an early and influential member of Gardner's own later coven, and the biographer Philip Heselton, have proposed several candidate identifications for Old Dorothy, most prominently a woman named Dorothy Clutterbuck, a wealthy local resident whose existence and general social position have been documented, though direct evidence connecting her personally to organized witchcraft practice remains circumstantial and contested. No independent contemporary record from 1939 describing the coven, its membership or the initiation itself has been located, leaving Gardner's own later accounts as the primary and, in key respects, uncorroborated source for the story.
Historians of modern paganism, particularly Ronald Hutton in his extensive research on the origins of Wicca, treat the New Forest coven claim with considerable caution, noting both the absence of independent verification and the strong possibility that Gardner drew on, adapted or substantially originated ritual material himself, whether or not some genuine occult social circle in the New Forest area provided a starting point or an inspiration.
Whatever its historical accuracy, the New Forest initiation story functions as Wicca's own founding narrative in a manner comparable to origin stories in other new religious movements, and it remains central to how Gardnerian Wicca traces its own lineage and legitimacy even as scholars continue to debate how literally that story should be taken.