pensnest | The Lion's Cage

There is a large shed in our front garden. It's a sturdy, well-constructed edifice of impressive size. It was introduced to us as The Lion's Cage, though we did not know why (and thought perhaps this was in tribute to Lion's Wood, just across the road). But it has housed all our boxed books and my craft supplies for the last two years, plus stuff like planks, flattened cardboard boxes, spare washing machine, what not. The books and boxes and planks have made their way into the house at last, and the Lion's Cage stands empty.

Our neighbours, who've been here for about thirty years, told us that a previous owner bought this magnificent shed—which has pointy finials, windows in the roof, and lots of split doors—from an estate somewhere in Norfolk. We don't know where, exactly, but it seems to have been owned at some point by the kind of eccentric Victorian who kept wild beasts. There is a legend which says the Lion savaged a small boy, but such information as our neighbours could supply was very vague, and I suspect the tale is, shall we say, heavily embellished.

Well. We will be building* a double garage, and the site for this partially overlaps the site of the Lion's Cage, so we've known for a long time that the big shed has to go. It seems a shame to destroy something with so much character and unconfirmed but exciting history, but we've found someone who would be delighted to transfer it to his home, and this afternoon he showed up to begin the deconstruction.

By the end of the afternoon, the modern extension to the Lion's Cage had been taken down, and the internals—shelves and shuttering, various—removed. And there are scratch marks! Plus possible evidence of an escape, for certainly one of the windows had been supplied with sturdy bars. But, scratch marks aplenty, indicating fairly firmly that whatever lived in there, while not necessarily a Lion, was quite large, endowed with impressive claws, and anxious to leave.

Having recycled/re-used a swimming pool, I'm glad we can also recycle/re-use this magnificent shed.

* We won't actually be building this ourselves, we're getting the chaps back in to do it.

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frausorge

Scratch marks! That sounds quite gothic.

pensnest

Whatever it was definitely did not want to be in there.

watervole

Wow!

turlough

How cool! I'm now totally convinced there once were lions living in your (former) shed!

I certainly think there is a fair chance of some kind of large feline.

ephemera

That is an added bonus to the recycling process - evidence! evidence, I say!

Hmm, I don't think I took any pictures of the scratches, and they probably wouldn't have come out well anyway. Most of it has now gone off to Cantley to be resurrected there, so all the scratchmarks are now Elsewhere In Norfolk.