The South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA) is the regional film archive for the South West of England. Established in 1993, SWFTA's core collection comprises of the combined programme libraries of Westward Television and TSW (Television South West). The archive also cares for a significant number of donated film collections, both amateur and professional, dating back to the early 1900s.
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The Beast of Bodmin Moor
A farmer tells all about some wild goings-on
From the collection of:
Overview
Bodmin Moor is a beautiful but creepy place to be at night and yet another sighting of the Beast of Bodmin Moor fuels speculation into why one of Britain’s most feared animals has never been caught. Despite little to no physical proof of its existence and declared a phantom by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, every now and then a story of the wild cat on the prowl killing livestock rears it ugly head (and gets eaten).
Some believe the beast to be a large black panther thought to have been imported as a fashionable tropical pet in the seventies and released into the Cornish wild when it became too big to handle. Others question whether an animal has escaped from a nearby zoo. A young boy walking beside the River Fowey in 1995 found a skull of a leopard and The Natural History Museum in London verified its authenticity but the skull had been imported into the UK as part of a leopard skin rug – with head attached or in this case detached.
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