The Nottingham Lion: the Tollerton lion hunt

Tollerton sits on the southern edge of Nottingham, in the Rushcliffe district, beside a small airport. On 22 July 1976 the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 received Royal Assent. One week later, something walked across a field on Tollerton Lane.

Thursday 29 July 1976. Shortly after 6am. David Crowther and David Bentley were delivering milk on Tollerton Lane, between Nottingham and Tollerton, to a bungalow opposite the airport entrance. Then they saw it.

"We both saw what to us was a lion. It was 50 yards away, had its head down and its long tail had a bushy end. It was walking away from us, very slowly." They watched it move around the edge of a field.

Martin Roberts, who lived at the farm, remembers the men running into the farmyard to phone the police. They believed they had seen a lioness. "We would both stake our lives on what we saw."

Police were initially disbelieving. By nightfall, Nottinghamshire Constabulary had officers out with dogs, guns, loud hailers and a helicopter, backed by marksmen with high-powered rifles. Army units brought infra-red night-sight equipment, and vets laid doped meat. Householders were told to keep windows closed "and eyes open." The night before, police had taken calls about the mysterious restlessness of people's pets.

Reports poured in. Police logged 65 reported sightings and took at least 15 seriously. A farmer at Clipstone, near Cotgrave, found strange paw prints. A Norfolk couple said they had seen a lion in a lay-by at Lowdham a week earlier, but had kept quiet for fear of not being believed.

On 1 August Dr John Chisholm, the county's deputy coroner, and his wife watched a large animal trying to break through undergrowth to reach a stream, near their home at Stanton-on-the-Wolds or neighbouring Normanton-on-the-Wolds. Two golfers at Stanton golf club reported it too. Armed officers searched the course and disrupted a tournament. Martin Roberts remembered three days kept indoors.

Top-deck bus passengers on the A52 had seen an ornamental stone lion. A Radcliffe-on-Trent sighting was somebody's Great Dane. Village children searching with sticks panicked at the rear of a sandy Jersey cow. Police checked zoos and private lion owners within 100 miles, but no-one appeared to have lost a lion. On 6 August, after eight days, police said they no longer believed a lion was at large, blaming mistakes, large dogs, and even a large brown paper bag.

Others looked to the new law. A theory common to British big cat stories holds that owners released animals around the time of the Act. John Knifton suggested a puma, cougar or mountain lion. But a puma has no tuft on its tail, and the milkmen were specific about that bushy end.

On 9 August, more than 70 miles away at Thorganby, south of York, Alan Pestall described a black shadow with "a cat's face and a long tail," about 3 to 4ft long. Its colour and size match no lion. No photograph of the Tollerton animal exists. The Evening Post printed only a mock-up. Yet the milkmen stayed unshaken in their belief, and the Nottingham Lion joined the Surrey Puma in the long British story of big cats that are seen, hunted and never found.