A LION attack is the last thing one might expect to hear of in the Wiltshire countryside, but that is exactly the occurrence immortalised in a painting about to go up for auction.

On the night of October 20, 1816 the London to Exeter mail coach pulled into The Winterslow Hut, now the Pheasant Inn, between Salisbury and Andover.

Nicknamed ‘Quicksilver’ due to its speed, the coach was carrying mail, a mail coach guard, paying passengers and a driver. As it drew into the inn, a lioness emerged from the undergrowth and attacked the lead horse of the Quicksilver, clawing the horse’s neck and chest.

Two of the passengers of the coach fled to the inn and locked themselves inside, blocking the door against the remaining passenger and driver, while the mail guard, one Joseph Pike, attempted to shoot the animal with his blunderbuss.

The animal had escaped from Ballard’s travelling menagerie, which had stopped for the night nearby and the keepers were chasing it along with a large mastiff dog, which arrived at the scene and set upon the lioness.

The lioness then released the horse and attacked the dog, chasing and finally killing it and the menagerie’s keepers eventually trapped the lioness under a granary.

Her capture was reported in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal the following week: “Her owner and his assistants…made her lie down upon [a sack]; they then tied her four legs and passed a cord round her mouth, which they secured; in this state they drew her out from under the granary, upon the sack, and then she was lifted and carried … the lioness lay as quietly as a lamb during her removal to the caravan.”

The incident became known all over the country and, at a time before telephones, telegraphs and railways, the Sunday night attack was even reported the very next day in the London Courier.

And the attack delayed the mail coach by just 45 minutes.

The Lioness Attacking the Horse of the Exeter Mail coach is a 19th century copy after a popular painting by James Pollard goes to auction at the Woolley and Wallis Salisbury salerooms with an estimate of £600 to £800 next Thursday.

More information from Woolley and Wallis on 01722 424500 or at woolleyandwallis.co.uk.