Admittedly, this isn’t really a folk tale, but a collection of memorates for a contemporary legend. However, the time and distances involved almost amount to a story. Moreover, its location could have been put almost anywhere in the county, but sightings of the Lindsey Leopard have mainly been in the north, hence the name. Big cat sightings (or imagined sightings) are common in other places too, of course, but there does appear to be credence to some of these ones, which began in the 1990s, peaked in the early 2000s, and are still occasionally claimed: mutilated livestock have been found on several occasions, and in 1998 large paw prints near Gainsborough were determined by the RSPCA probably to belong to a puma or lynx.

Other sightings have occurred in places as far apart as Stapleford Woods near Newark (arbitrarily and perhaps controversially chosen for this tale’s map marker, as it is not in Lindsey), Laughton Woods near Gainsborough, areas around both Horncastle and Louth, and many places between and beyond, so the Lindsey Leopard is quite a wanderer – and by now geriatric, if alive: leopards and pumas occasionally live to be older than twenty in captivity, but otherwise rarely make it past fifteen. An article on this phenomenon, from 2022, can be read here. Adrian Gray has a chapter on big cat sightings, and a map of them, in Lincolnshire Tales of Mystery and Murder (2004).

Words by RORY WATERMAN