NEIL ARNOLD: Of Kentish Marten Cats

The Marten Cat is, of course, an archaic term for Martes foina the beech or stone marten. This creature is found across its range in conjunction with the pine marten Martes martes. Until the late 19th century it was believed that both species were found in Britain, but Edward Alston wrote a paper in 1872 consigning the British M. foina to the historical dustbin.

In my 1996 book The Smaller Mystery Carnivores of the Westcountry I present a case for Alston being completely wrong. I have been proven right in other assertions I made in this book, and so I am waiting for more news on this one JD

Whilst trawling through local archives I found the following text from The Kentish Notebook, August 3rd 1889, in reference to the Marten Cat in Kent.

Marten-Cat (June 15th, 19th) – An interesting description of the marten-cat, by the Right Hon. Lord Clifton, appears in the Rochester Naturalist of January 1884, from which I extract the following remarks on the occurrence of this rare animal in Kent:

“With regard to Kent, it never occurred to me to ask about marten-cats, till the other day, when one of my father’s old keepers, G. Mannering, informed me they were not uncommon in the woods round Luddesdown, particularly Red Wood, in the early part of the century, but in the Cobham and Shorne Woods they were unknown. Edward Wells, who was keeper first to Captain Markett, and then to my great-grandfather and grandfather told Mannering that he had killed them, both on the Meopham Court Estate and in Red Wood. A stuffed marten-cat was preserved for some time at the Darnley Arms, Cobham. Mannering states that they were particularly fond of lying on the top of pollard beech-stubs, where was brushwood. I can well believe this, and should also think that they found harbour in ivy-covered trees, and in squirrels nests in the yew trees, which abound in Red Wood and neighbouring woods. Curiously enough, about ten or twelve years ago, a beast very like a marten-cat was twice seen in that district, once in Cobhambury Wood, and another time crossing a field towards that wood. All the men who saw it described it as something between a fox-cub, a ferret, and a small dog. No such description would apply to a badger or otter, letting alone the dryness of the locality for an otter. On the other hand, an escaped (foreign) genet, a large sort of weasel-like animal, was once caught in Chattenden, and another was reported to me from near Chatham. The pole-cat would be nearer the description, but I do not think that men accustomed to foxes would liken a pole-cat to a fox-cub. The pole-cat is also quite as extinct here as the marten-cat, unless it be true than an animal, seen last year at the lay-by (heaps of material excavated for the Higham and Strood tunnel) near the little Hermitage, was a pole-cat. Mannering, who was born in 1815, can just remember a pole-cat being caught alive at Brewer’s Wood Brickyard, close to the Cobham and Rochester Road. The pole-cat is a very marsh-loving animal, and it may be that it is still found in the reed beds of the Hundred of Hoo. Anyhow, Cobhambury Wood is a place far more likely to harbour a stray marten-cat than a stray pole-cat. The pole-cat delighted in old walls, stacks of faggots, ditches and banks, etc, etc. It is not so much a woodland animal.”

At the ‘Free Museum and Reading Room’, Gillingham, the Secretary meeting-place of the Gillingham Naturalists’ Club (Secretary Mr. S.J. West), there are two splendid stuffed specimens of the marten-cat.

Article submitted by ‘Observer’