Rumours of a beast with Dracula-like teeth on Brassknocker Hill even made German newspapers. But when a Chronicle photographer finally caught up with it, he was in for a surprise.

Matthew Zuckerman traces Brassknocker's wild history

BACK in September 1979, a shocking story appeared in Het Binnenhof, a daily newspaper circulating in the Hague and West Holland. The headline ran: 'Beest van Bath lelaagt Briuts bos, ' which translates as 'Beast of Bath destroys British Wood'.

It concerned a monster that was allegedly at large in Brassknocker Hill, causing terror and devouring the wood with Dracula-like teeth.

The beast was predictably camerashy, but it was variously described as a chimpanzee, baboon, spider monkey, gibbon or lemur.

The citizens of Bath were less worried than those in Holland, but that didn't stop 81-year-old Brassknocker Hill resident Frank Green from taking up a shotgun vigil.

"I am very fond of some animals, " he told the Chronicle, "but I reckon this creature could be dangerous and I am taking no chances."

By the following summer the mystery seemed to have been solved when a policeman caught sight of a chimpanzee in the woods.

"We were sure this mystery creature would turn out to be a monkey of some sort, " said Insp Mike Price. "After all, men from Mars aren't hairy, are they?"

Case closed, then? Far from it.

Two years later, the stories returned, only this time the rumours concerned a four-legged creature - a stag pole cat, or even a Japanese deer.

Then in the summer of 1984, reports started coming in to The Bath Chronicle newsdesk of a strangelooking creature holding up traffic on Brassknocker Hill.

"I grabbed my notebook, " said then reporter Roger Green, now editor of the Littlehampton Gazette, "Colin (Shepherd) the photographer grabbed his camera, and we rushed out to the hill.

"The reports were pretty credible, so we were convinced that there was something there, " Roger recalled. "It was with slight trepidation that we entered the woods. After several minutes of stalking, we came across the 'beast', by then calmly grazing in a field.

"It was an Alpacca, a type of llama, and had escaped from a paddock. It was later reunited with its owner by the police."

So there it is. The Beast of Brassknocker Hill was a chimp or an Alpacca, or maybe a weird offspring of the two.

In 1988, however, there were fresh sightings, this time in Batheaston - which hardly qualifies as a neighbour of Brassknocker Hill, but to a wild animal this far out of its natural habitat, it is close enough to qualify.

The creature was spotted in a field between the A4 and the river by Jane DiMarco as she travelled into Bath on a November morning.

"First of all I thought it was a fox, " Jane told the Chronicle, "but it was too big. It had a roundish head and it walked in a cat-like way."

Other sightings of a large black, panther-like cat were reported several times around the Combe Grove Hotel, Monkton Combe, near Bath. The creature was never found, but there is no reason to doubt its existence.

According to British Big Cats Society, the number of wild cats at large in Britain is on the increase, and while there were just seven sightings in Somerset last year, Gloucestershire recorded an amazing 58. And the numbers have increased alarmingly in the first three months of this year, with reports of more than 100 big cat sightings.

In recent years, there have been no reports of wild animals roaming Brassknocker Woods, but with past sightings of chimps, llamas and panthers, it is surely only a matter of time. If you go down to the woods today . . .

• Story originally published by:
The Bath Chronicle, Somerset / England - Sept 9.02

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