Interesting to read through this discussion and see no comments from a very well known ZooChatter who worked at Guilsborough for the Symingtons, before leaving the zoo industry to follow a very different career.
Personally, I visited three times:
1 - As a day visitor in the Symington era. It was a very pretty site, much nicer than many of its contemporaries. Possibly too steep, unsafely so in places, and enclosure design (there was no evidence of ANY) would have had to have followed the expensive route of terracing enclosures and paths in some form of zig-zag as was done at Penscynor - which it DID NOT! As it was, the Park was a low rent, jumble of ex-pets in shabby, dirty and tiny home made squalid cages, with a silted-up dank, tree-lined ‘pond/lake’ at the bottom of the hill which was home to a single Common Seal. The paddocks behind this looked nice from a distance.
I don’t remember whether it was called Guilsborough Grange Bird Park, Guilsborough Grange Bird and Pet Park, or Guilsborough Grange Wildlife Park at the time - probably the last.
Apart from the house and site, the rest of the place was on par with the bottom end of similar places at the time and comparable with Cromer, Bridgemere, Thorney, Southam, Basildon - etc. Rode and Stagsden were equally shabby, but were owned by people who had a good knowledge of their charges. The
grassed estate car-parks at Guilsborough with their mature park tress were pretty level compared to the zoo itself and were very busy with several rows of cars leading from the house along the drive to the gate-house. It was as busy as any small rural zoo I visited at the time.
2. My second visit was to view the place when it was put up for sale by the Symingtons as a going-concern, (presumably at the time it was purchased by Vince), and we had been sent a glossy expensive country-house style prospectus and three years of accounts by the land agents, along with a personal invitation to see the owners. We were greeted by the Symingtons and invited in for tea into the main drawing room which overlooked the lawns and the valley beyond. They were polite and gracious, and reminded me of any number of similar landed families, (often ex-forces), of the time; quite similar to the Fishers or the Wayres, but with none of their animal knowledge and no interest in obtaining same. There was no indication of the political leanings of the Major’s wife in the rooms we saw, and I understand that her various possessions were reserved to be seen by special guests, presumably following a convivial dinner party.
3. Visit number three was for the auction held by Vince, which was catalogued to contain a good number of animals as well as the usual country-house/farm bits and pieces. The auction was held in the manner of a farm sale, just like those at Midland, Long Sutton and Lilford; and indeed Kilverstone. I can remember an albino Grey Squirrel in a parrot cage going under the hammer, but a number of animals including Spider Monkeys were listed in the sale catalogue, and missing on the day. These at least had been hastily collected pre-auction by Molly Badham, ‘rescued’ perhaps but almost certainly Twyross property.
I am sorry to report that the sale prospectus and the auction catalogue were not kept; those sort of things didn’t seem of interest at the time!
I can also confirm that as stated above, the Petrie's did not buy the Park and it did not become a Pet Crematorium.
But - I think it did have some kind of bizarre pet graveyard, which could be where the latter confusion arose?
