The Cricklewood Lynx: Lara and the Beast of Barnet

For years, north London had its stories. From 1991, people reported a big cat around Barnet. In September 1998 the sightings returned, at Potters Bar and South Mimms. Police marksmen and a Met helicopter searched. Residents were told to lock up their pets. The press called it the Beast of Barnet. At London Zoo, keeper Ray Charter had heard it before: "We get numerous calls at London Zoo reporting big cat sightings and so far all of them have proved incorrect."

Friday 4 May 2001. Hocroft Road, off Hendon Way, London NW2. Carol Montague was cleaning at the home of Alan and Charlotte Newman. Then she saw the animal.

"I was the first one to see it and I was very frightened because I couldn't believe how big it was. I thought it was a leopard or something. It was the size of an Alsatian and about 4ft away from me."

The police reportedly laughed at her call. She persisted. Two constables came and found the cat on the Newmans' patio, calmly sitting there. Their urgent calls brought armed police, a London Zoo team, a vet and an RSPCA officer.

They tried to coax it into a cage. They tried a net. They tried a loop on a pole. Nothing worked. The vet fired a tranquilliser dart without a clear view. The cat was not sedated. It was angry. It jumped the rear garden fence into a private sports and tennis court area. Down an alleyway. Onto Farm Avenue. A final dash across the road, and a van narrowly missed it.

The driver, Mr Murphy, joined the chase. "When I saw it cornered, pacing up and down and growling, that was enough for me." The cat had reached the stairwell of a block of flats on the corner of Cricklewood Lane. Tony Sainsbury, London Zoo's Senior Veterinary Officer, sedated it with a second dart, by the zoo's account from a blowpipe. Leora Newman remembered: "Finally, they threw a net over it." Alan Newman recalled scenes like a "Keystone Cops" movie.

At London Zoo she was identified as a female European lynx, about 18 months old. Underweight but in fair condition. Lame in the left hind leg. Senior Curator Nick Lindsay noted that keeping such a cat needs a Dangerous Wild Animal Licence. Police and the zoo believed she had been kept illegally and escaped. No owner was ever found. DI Paul Anstee of the Metropolitan Police praised the zoo's expertise. On 9 May the Daily Telegraph declared: "The Beast of Cricklewood is caged."

Headlines offered the lynx as the answer to more than ten years of sightings. The timeline argues otherwise. A cat of 18 months in May 2001 was born around late 1999. She cannot have been the animal seen in 1991 or 1998. A 2024 estate agent's claim that she hid at the house for over a decade was marketing, and one listing image had a lynx added digitally. The earlier reports remain unexplained.

They named her Lara. She recovered at London Zoo, then moved to the Parc Zoologique du Bois de Coulange at Amnéville, near Metz, France. She had many cubs, sent to zoos in Spain, Germany, Wales and Nashville. Back problems followed her, which the park's director blamed on an accident in England. She was put to sleep in 2009. In 2023 Steven Wilson's mural in Claremont Park counted the Beast of Barnet among the area's heritage stories.