Guilsborough Wildlife Park

Pertinax said:
I certainly would never have described Rode's lake as 'disgusting' either. During all my visits it never looked green or silted up at all. As for the 'shabby' description, the lawns were always mown, the gravel paths around the wooded area clean and tidy. I'll allow the aviaries were homemade and made of wood and netting- but how else do you make aviaries on an economic basis ? Everything was very clean and tidy from my memories and I'm one of those folk who immediately notice if they aren't- even as my younger self..
Click to expand...
FBBird said:
As you say, we will have to disagree. Maybe it turns on that word ‘shabby’, although I can’t agree with Rode’s lake being ‘disgusting’ either!
We both seem to have had high regard for most of the places mentioned.
I’m very fond of my local zoo (Axe Valley) which has fairly similar enclosures, with a wonderful collection, good husbandry and a ‘not too shabby’ breeding record.
Anyway, I’m sorry never to have visited Guilsborough Grange, bits of which I’m sure I wouldn’t have liked.
I did send them some Kalij once….
Click to expand...

Yes, I remember the Rode site was pretty with mown lawns, daffodils in the spring, the inherited mature trees and a nice miniature (real-steam) railway.
There are a series of pictures on here showing this, but the one below by Parrotsandrew (taken in 2000 apparently), is how I remember it - with rusty wire, and collapsing fences and aviaries. That is what I meant by 'shabby', and it really did not begin to compare with B-o-W, Kelling, Birdworld, Weston Underwood etc.
This was possibly just before it closed?
Sorry for posting this in the Guilsborough thread, but I did want to explain what I meant & how I remember it.

full
 
Last edited:
Pertinax said:
I certainly would never have described Rode's lake as 'disgusting' either. During all my visits it never looked green or silted up at all. As for the 'shabby' description, the lawns were always mown, the gravel paths around the wooded area clean and tidy. I'll allow the aviaries were homemade and made of wood and netting- but how else do you make aviaries on an economic basis ? Everything was very clean and tidy from my memories and I'm one of those folk who immediately notice if they aren't- even as my younger self..
Click to expand...
My memory of. Rode aviaries were, I would describe as rustic. I suppose as these sort of aviaries get old they start to rot and then look "shabby ".
 
Strathmorezoo said:
My memory of. Rode aviaries were, I would describe as rustic. I suppose as these sort of aviaries get old they start to rot and then look "shabby ".
Click to expand...
Rustic is a good description. I didn't visit there in its final years so I don't know what it looked like then but it was certainly very attractive in its prime with the mature trees etc they had in the grounds..
 
I may be the person ZooNews2024 is referring when he writes about an ex-keeper at Guilsborough ending up with a very different career (firstly through industrial fasteners and then my other interest of vintage/rare soul music). It seems that ,even under the Symingtons,there were two very different eras..I was there from 74/75 (when it was called Guilsborough Grange Bird Park). Then,in 1977, disaster struck the zoo when a crop-spraying aeroplane doused the place with pesticide killing most of the stock. The ensuing compensation saw the zoo move into big cats,primates etc (a move that horrified me,as the Symingtons scarcely knew a Jaguar from a Jaguarundi),it then became Guilsborough Grange Wildlife Park,some years before the sale to Colin Vince. I knew not of any connection historically to Symington soups,the Major (Stewart Symington,a lovely old boy) was director of a rope firm in Basingstoke in my time. Its was his wife Trixie,a Finnish woman who had been a German baroness,who ran the zoo. She was a very good stock woman, but her zoological knowledge was limited to say the least. Both of these people died a few years ago at ripe old ages.
I couldnt spare the time or space here to recount trips to Ravensden,Stagsden and multiple other stories. We even had the President of the Seychelles,James Mancham,to stay, Christmas 1974. I showed him around on Christmas morning and he said he wanted to have a place like it on The Seychelles - and I was the one who should run it(I was seventeen!). Hmm.
I must finally add that the place was pristine in my time there,even if the philosophy and husbandry was somewhat homespun. And,with Coton Manor at the other end of the village, it may be the smallest community EVER to host TWO zoos.
 
Tim Brown said:
I may be the person ZooNews2024 is referring when he writes about an ex-keeper at Guilsborough ending up with a very different career (firstly through industrial fasteners and then my other interest of vintage/rare soul music). It seems that ,even under the Symingtons,there were two very different eras..I was there from 74/75 (when it was called Guilsborough Grange Bird Park). Then,in 1977, disaster struck the zoo when a crop-spraying aeroplane doused the place with pesticide killing most of the stock. The ensuing compensation saw the zoo move into big cats,primates etc (a move that horrified me,as the Symingtons scarcely knew a Jaguar from a Jaguarundi),it then became Guilsborough Grange Wildlife Park,some years before the sale to Colin Vince. I knew not of any connection historically to Symington soups,the Major (Stewart Symington,a lovely old boy) was director of a rope firm in Basingstoke in my time. Its was his wife Trixie,a Finnish woman who had been a German baroness,who ran the zoo. She was a very good stock woman, but her zoological knowledge was limited to say the least. Both of these people died a few years ago at ripe old ages.
I couldnt spare the time or space here to recount trips to Ravensden,Stagsden and multiple other stories. We even had the President of the Seychelles,James Mancham,to stay, Christmas 1974. I showed him around on Christmas morning and he said he wanted to have a place like it on The Seychelles - and I was the one who should run it(I was seventeen!). Hmm.
I must finally add that the place was pristine in my time there,even if the philosophy and husbandry was somewhat homespun. And,with Coton Manor at the other end of the village, it may be the smallest community EVER to host TWO zoos.
Click to expand...
;)

I remember the big cats in wire cages to the right hand side of a strange brick wall (whose courses of bricks followed the ground surface down the steep slope, rather than being horizontal) which with conventional vertical doorways made for a mind-bending picture, which you would need to see rather than have described thus. This wall felt as though it had perhaps been one side of an earlier walled garden, but if so the rest was long gone. The big-cat cages were aviary sized and had salvaged ceramic bath tubs as 'baths'/water bowls for the cats, and were mixed with those housing domestic dogs, Alsations (or something similar) from memory, with cage labels on them similar to the cats.. A decent cage (cant remember the indoors if there was any) for Spider Monkeys at the top of the slope, and a round cage built around a tree for Arctic Foxes on the way in from the parking area. The cobbled courtyard at the house had a similar steep slope, and outbuildings converted into a tea room.

The place would often come up in conversation when I visited Rod at Stagsden, especially as Trixie used to delight in teasing him when she visited, always negatively comparing the number of cars in the car-park at Stagsden, when compared to the busier Guilsborough. I always got the impressive that Rod was rather fond of her, even if he would never admit it. The Major was never mentioned, so I always assumed he walked behind the 'baroness' somewhat when it came to zoo business...
The accounts we were sent by the land agents (if true) showed it to be the viable 'going-concern' it was claimed to be when the Symingtons sold it; provided of course you had the funds to purchase outright rather than borrow, which we didnt.

As said up-thread it was probably a missed opportunity, and could have become something much better - not a Marwell or Kilverstone perhaps, but there was a decent amount of land and what appeared to be public support.
 
Last edited:
How well I remember that strange brick wall ! In my time there was a run of aviaries there that mixed psittacines,softbills and seedeating passerines together. There were no indoor quarters,only a shelter with a heat lamp at the end of each (three aviaries),in winter time the aviaries were covered in opaque plastic sheeting(the place was closed in the Winter). At the very top was a door, behind which the Major had a sauna to which he would retire with The Times every Sunday evening. There was little doubt that Trixie "wore the trousers"...she was a very assertive "country" woman,not unlike Jemima Parry-Jones. It was only ever opened (in 73 I think), as a money-making exercise. In 1988,I made my first return visit (Vince was owner by then),and I was rather shocked to find it in a bit of "a state". The spider monkeys did have an indoor house.The round cage for Arctic Foxes had Quaker Parakeets in it back in 75. For sure it could have been something nicer/better,but then we can say that about so many places at the time.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
And even then, very much an incomplete list! If you (or anyone else) can spot any noteworthy missing collections, let me know and I'll get someone to add them to the list.
Click to expand...
Yes indeed.
I'll have a look through it again, and see.
I have mentioned a few to the BS in the past, but am not sure any would be classed as 'noteworthy'. In the era we are discussing there were so many private collections which threw open the doors and put in a pay-desk. That was pretty much all you had to do.
Some of these are included in the BS lists, like Clopton Bird Gardens near Oundle in Northamptonshire, which was only open for two years, did not even have a car-park, and was just that - aviaries in a back garden with a pay desk.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top