Since then the British countryside has been devoid of large carnivores and any memory of living alongside anything larger than a fox or badger has been lost with the brown bear and the wolf also now absent from the landscape.
Now new plans have been revealed to reintroduce one predator to Scotland - the Eurasian lynx, which is considered the most suitable candidate for carnivore restoration in Britain.
A group of three charities believe that their introduction as a natural predator of deer will have an indirect benefit to maintaining Scotland's woodlands.
As a shy and solitary woodland hunter, lynx are rarely glimpsed and attacks on humans are virtually unknown.