Best and Worst Closed Zoos/Bird Gardens

C

crested seriema

Active Member
Still miss Stagsden, a superb little bird garden, nicely laid out with good collection of Cranes and Owls, liked the walled garden at Lilford too with it's Kori Bustards! as for the worst,Wellingborough Zoo, very cramped enclosures,Llanerch Zoo near St Asaph, and Guilsborough near Northampton, not to be confused with the nearbyCoton Manor Gardens, which are still open and have an interesting collection of Wildfowl!
 
Possibly the worst closed zoo I have visited was mole hall wildlife park, I remember even as a child finding the enclosures dirty and the whole place felt run down to me even as a 10 year old. It could have been so much more if only more money was available.
 
My favourite closed collection has to be Rode. I visited Gatwick only once and liked it very much, thinking it was the ideal small zoo. As for the worst collections, the only zoo in which I have not felt safe was Knaresborough when I visited shortly before its closure. Scarborough Zoo and Marineland did not do much to inspire and I once visited with my parents a small indoor place somewhere near Morecambe (Heysham Head?) that was not great - not long after our visit its Himalayan Black Bear was reported to have escaped and been shot.
 
The best closed bird collection that I ever visited was the old Birdland in Bourton on the Water. Len Hill had wonderful species like Lear's macaws, swift parakeets, Salvadori's lories, a range of hummingbirds, Wilson's and red birds of paradise. But the aviaries were small because the whole garden was small and the design was idiosyncratic to put it mildly.
I'm not sure which collection near Morecambe it was that Parrotsandrew visited. I don't think it can have been Winged World at Heysham, which could not have accommodated a bear if I remember it rightly. There were a few mammals in cages around a central courtyard, I remember a Brazilian tree porcupine in particular. But its main feature was a separate building with a set of large glass fronted indoor enclosures containing a nice collection of soft-billed birds: I believe that it was modelled on the Bird House at Frankfurt.
I remember Rode and Stagsden fondly and I also visited Peakirk, the Wildfowl Trust's second collection, which was a backup for Slimbridge. Once Martinmere, Washington and Arundel were opened it became redundant, because it was just a captive collection with no space for reserve for wild waterfowl.
I also liked the Otter Trust's collection at Bungay, which had beautiful natural enclosures with a stream running through them. I did visit Belle Vue and Glasgow too, but in both cases they were past their best. Glasgow was very run down when I was there because many of the enclosures were empty and it was clear that it was close to closing down.
I am very careful about the collections that I visit, so I don't think I have visited a collection that was particularly bad - or maybe I have just wiped one or two bad memories.

Alan
 
gentle lemur said:
I'm not sure which collection near Morecambe it was that Parrotsandrew visited. I don't think it can have been Winged World at Heysham, which could not have accommodated a bear if I remember it rightly.
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It was not Winged World, it was a smallish building and the bear was the first thing visitors saw on entering. It was in a small barred cage. I cannot remember much else about the place.
 
The place Parrotsandrew is referring to was on the end of the jetty in Morecambe,the same jetty where Marineland was eventually located-for a short while they were both there(ive seen the post card that proves it).It was a terrible indoor zoo inside a stone building although I only vaguely remember it....ive seen one worse-in Qatar,near Al Wabra,not the nicest of subjects to contemplate to be honest.Winged World on the other hand,was quite brilliant, better than any bird house we have in the UK today by a country mile.
 
gentle lemur said:
The best closed bird collection that I ever visited was the old Birdland in Bourton on the Water. Len Hill had wonderful species like Lear's macaws, swift parakeets, Salvadori's lories, a range of hummingbirds, Wilson's and red birds of paradise. But the aviaries were small because the whole garden was small and the design was idiosyncratic to put it mildly.
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A range of species to make any of us incredibly envious and/or nostalgic these days..... in terms of UK holdings, of those species you mention we are down to a single individual hummingbird at London, and three Lears Macaws which are avibus non grata and officially do not exist.
 
The place I still miss and regret was Kilverstone. It was a far better site for a zoo than Banham, in terms of size, location and landscape. Its remit might have been a tad restrictive, but it had a marvellous collection of both callitrichids and spider monkeys. It never did put up much of a show of birds other than parrots (although I have a dim memory of a couple of species of oropendola from a visit as a child). Its penguin pool was by some margin the worst I've seen in the UK.

The worst? Well, I saw Flamingo Garden in 1996, quite some way past its prime. If anybody can tell us what it was like in the 1970s, when it had 15 species of stork and a pair of Siberian White Cranes, it would be a pleasure to read.
 
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IanRRobinson said:
The place I still miss and regret was Kilverstone. It was a far better site for a zoo than Banham, both in terms of size, location and landscape. Its remit might have been a tad restrictive, but it had a marvellous collection of both callitrichids and spider monkeys. It never did put up much of a show of birds other than parrots (although I have a dim memory of a couple of species of oropendola from a visit as a child). Its penguin pool was by some margin the worst I've seen in the UK.
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I never visited, being only a small child when it closed, and even if it were open now I imagine I would have still never visited being as it was in Norfolk, which is a bugger to reach by public transport..... but even so, it is still a place which I also miss and regret. :rolleyes::(
 
IanRRobinson said:
The place I still miss and regret was Kilverstone. It was a far better site for a zoo than Banham, in terms of size, location and landscape. Its remit might have been a tad restrictive, but it had a marvellous collection of both callitrichids and spider monkeys. It never did put up much of a show of birds other than parrots (although I have a dim memory of a couple of species of oropendola from a visit as a child). Its penguin pool was by some margin the worst I've seen in the UK.

The worst? Well, I saw Flamingo Garden in 1996, quite some way past its prime. If anybody can tell us what it was like in the 1970s, when it had 15 species of stork and a pair of Siberian White Cranes, it would be a pleasure to read.
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Have to agree about Flamingo Garden,I went twice in about 1988 and1994, the bird garden section was poor, aviaries were poor,bad enclosures in that area for Bison and Sitatunga,past the car park were some paddocks for hoofed animals,Deer,Camels etc which weren't too bad under the circumstances, considering it was only half an hour fromStagsden, that collection was much better and far more worthy of a visit.Not too far from either collection was a small bird garden at Melchbourne betweenRushden and Bedford which mostly had Pheasants and Waterfowl, reasonable enclosures for Geese , whilstPheasants were in aviaries around a picnic area.There was potential for improvement but never stayed open that long!
 
TeaLovingDave said:
I never visited, being only a small child when it closed, and even if it were open now I imagine I would have still never visited being as it was in Norfolk, which is a bugger to reach by public transport..... but even so, it is still a place which I also miss and regret. :rolleyes::(
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I'm sure you would have made the effort for the grison, tayra & other carnivores.
I visited Kilverstone at least half a dozen times in the late 70s/early 80s (inc 2 school trips) & it is by far the one i miss most & wish i could have re-visited with my daughter 20 years later.
Mole Hall, one of my nearest zoos, was terribly run down over its last few years, in fact most of the enclosures that were there when we visited after 2000 several times, were the same as when i went regularly as a child in the 70s, the collection was much better then too.
 
Tim Brown said:
The place Parrotsandrew is referring to was on the end of the jetty in Morecambe,the same jetty where Marineland was eventually located-for a short while they were both there(ive seen the post card that proves it).It was a terrible indoor zoo inside a stone building although I only vaguely remember it....ive seen one worse-in Qatar,near Al Wabra,not the nicest of subjects to contemplate to be honest.Winged World on the other hand,was quite brilliant, better than any bird house we have in the UK today by a country mile.
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Thanks Tim.
 
IanRRobinson said:
The place I still miss and regret was Kilverstone....
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pipaluk said:
I visited Kilverstone at least half a dozen times in the late 70s/early 80s (inc 2 school trips) & it is by far the one i miss most........
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I visited Kilverstone several times annually for many years and very much regretted its closing.

I whole-heartedly agree with both Ian and “Pipaluk”; of all the closed UK zoos Kilverstone is definitely the one I miss the most.

I’m sure I’ve posted something similar about Kilverstone on another thread:-

There was a great collection of neotropical mammals; I especially remember the tassel-eared marmosets, black-handed tamarins, bearded saki, melanistic Geoffroy’s cat, naked-tailed armadillo, olingo, grison and tayra....
 
I remember visiting an attractive bird collection which I think was called Midland Bird Gardens a long time ago . I think it was part of a stately home where there was also a Motor Museum . Seem to remember there were aviaries around a lake .

Does anyone else remember it ?
 
Is there anybody here who has got memories of Belle Vue they can share? I was only 14 when it closed and never visite4d it..
 
IanRRobinson said:
Is there anybody here who has got memories of Belle Vue they can share? I was only 14 when it closed and never visite4d it..
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I too would be very interested in memories of Belle Vue, as it was a zoo I missed out on. I had been promised a visit there a year or so earlier when we went to stay with relatives, as along with Dudley it was the zoo my mother had been to a few times as a child. I can still remember coming home from school one day to be told it was closing/closed as she'd heard it on the news. Thankfully Dudley was saved by Bristol, but i still havent made it there! Strangely the year of these 2 zoos' problems was also the year we first went to Kilverstone- 1977
 
TeaLovingDave said:
and even if it were open now I imagine I would have still never visited being as it was in Norfolk,
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I think its actually in Suffolk, but same difference..;) Kilverstone is probably the only large collection that I've never visited in the UK (HWP is another) though some years after it closed, I discovered quite by accident that I was driving in the area where it was located.

Re Belle Vue Zoo. I was fortunate enough to visit several times in the late sixties/early seventies. My memories are hazy now. I do remember very well the Ape & Monkey Houses, and less clearly; the Bear 'castles' and carnivore enclosures, a central waterfowl pond and the 'Victorian' Black Rhinoceros enclosure.
 
I don't recall a zoo or any other animal collection at Marineland Morecambe, however it was probably in the 1980's when I went and I would have been a nipper myself then. What animals did they have? I do remember watching a dolphin show at Morecambe and have just found this on you tube.


I presume it probably closed down not too long after this.
 
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Pertinax said:
I think its actually in Suffolk, but same difference..;)
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Having double-checked, it was in Norfolk :p but about a mile or two from the Suffolk border. I am really not sure if it makes me feel better or worse to have worked out, through looking at rail routes and schedules, that I probably could have reached the collection quite easily after all - direct train to Peterborough, then regular connections to Thetford, from where it would have been a walk of a mile or two.......

Pertinax said:
Kilverstone is probably the only large collection that I've never visited in the UK (HWP is another) though some years after it closed, I discovered quite by accident that I was driving in the area where it was located..
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I'm amazed you have never visited HWP - get yourself there! :D you'll very much enjoy it.

Pertinax said:
Re Belle Vue Zoo. I was fortunate enough to visit several times in the late sixties/early seventies. My memories are hazy now. I do remember very well the Ape & Monkey Houses, and less clearly; the Bear 'castles' and carnivore enclosures, a central waterfowl pond and the 'Victorian' Black Rhinoceros enclosure.
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Though it doesn't count in the slightest, I was rather amused - when looking at some old maps on a hunch - to find that the Travel Lodge myself and Hel stayed in last Friday is located on the site of Belle Vue Zoo! :p
 
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