Barnburgh, Doncaster
“After fighting the cat the mile's distance to the village of Barnburgh, the knight made for the porch of St Peter's Church, presumably to try to get inside the church and close the door on the animal.” - A Church Near You
This tale occurred before the 15th Century and involved the Cresacre family who once owned a hall in the South Yorkshire village of Barnburgh. The Wildcat of Barnburgh is one of those stories that may not be entirely the truth, and may have been embellished time and time again depending on who was telling it…
The legend goes that a knight of the Cresacre family, supposedly Sir Percival Cresacre (but this has been highly debated… especially since he wasn’t even alive at the time that this story is supposed to have taken place…) was returning home late one day through dense woodland from Doncaster through Sprotborough and High Melton. As he was coming up to Barnburgh, a wildcat sprang out of the branches of a tree, ambushing him, and landed on the back of his horse.
The horse, spooked, threw both the wildcat and the knight onto the ground and fled. The wildcat turned on the knight and an intense battle between the two commenced and continued from Ludwell Hill all the way to Barnburgh.
Sir Percival’s Grave in St. Peters Churchyard, Barnburgh.
The Knight directed the fight towards St. Peter’s Church once they scrapped all the way to the village, with the intention of entering the church and slamming the door locking the wildcat outside. The wildcat was winning the battle, however, and the Knight fell dying on the church porch and, as a final attempt to stop the wildcat’s vicious reign of terror, stretched out his feet and crushed the cat against the wall.
And thus, as the legend states, the man killed the cat as the cat killed the man. Once the Knight’s horse returned home empty, a search party formed and they found both man and cat in the porch of St. Peter’s Church. Nowadays, it is said that the stones in the floor of the porch of St Peter's are still stained red. There is also a cat at the feet of the Cresacre effigy in the north aisle of the church.
Sources
Online Exhibition – Signs and Superstitions
The legend of the cat and the man - St Peter's Barnburgh - A Church Near You
