The Mummified Cat at Mill Hotel: A Mini-Essay

     Overlooking the River Stour in Sudbury, England, portions of the Mill Hotel harken back to the eleventh century, when the region was used as a Saxon mill. In 1971, when construction began to transform the building into a hotel, the mummified corpse of a cat was discovered in the original structure. As Brian Hoggard clarifies, the act of entombing cats in the ceilings, floors, or walls of homes is an ancient practice found in the British Isles and northern Europe meant as a protection ritual for the homestead and its occupants from evil entities.[1] Due to this factor, it is not unusual, Hoggard explains, for these preserved felines to emerge during renovations and for superstitions regarding their removal to spook construction crews and homeowners.[2] Such, in turn, was the case at Mill Hotel, where collapsed wooden beams, financial misfortunes, and a fire following the mummified cat’s removal prompted its return to a specially built glass panel in the floor.[3] Also, remodels in 1999 wrought similar results: the road outside the hotel exploded, the manager’s office flooded, and the worker who relocated the cat suffered a severe accident.[4] Although some maintain the occurrences in 1971 and 1999 are proof of the feline’s supernatural powers, others uphold they are mere coincidences and, in January of 1993, the British television show Grace and Favour mocked the idea in an episode titled “The Mummified Cat,” where the removal of a petrified feline from the manor house’s attic prompts a set of farcical misfortunes.

Works Referenced

Hoggard, Brian. “Concealed Animals.” Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain: A Feeling for Magic. Ed. Ronald Hutton. London: Palgrave, 2016. 106-117.

Jones, Richard. Haunted Britain and Ireland. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2002. 

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[1] Hoggard, 106-117.

[2] Hoggard, 106-117.

[3] Jones, 78.

[4] Jones, 78.