Name that zoo

robmv

robmv

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15+ year member
Which zoo is this?

Which zoo is this?

  • Media owner robmv
  • Date added
  • Comments 4

This slide was acquired in a box labelled "British Zoos" at a Chester antiques shop. The slide is dated August 1973.

At first glance, the concrete is very reminiscent of London's 1965 elephant house, but there a number of things that don't fit:
1) The walls are too low
2) The vegetation growing on top of the walls
3) The wood and concrete barrier separating the enclosures
4) The rocks set in concrete at the top of the moat
5) The public hand rail

Did another zoo build an elephant enclosure between 1965 and 1973 and copy the London concrete finish?

Any thoughts?
 
I'd say this is almost certainly somewhere in mainland Europe. That building looks far too substantial to be something that would have sprung up at a hazily-remembered zoo - a Plymouth, or a Coventry, for example.
 
Paradoxurus said:
Fair enough. The texture of the concrete reminds me of the old Zurich enclosure.
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I know what you mean: it was certainly similar.

sooty mangabey said:
I'd say this is almost certainly somewhere in mainland Europe. That building looks far too substantial to be something that would have sprung up at a hazily-remembered zoo - a Plymouth, or a Coventry, for example.
Click to expand...

I would tend to agree. Also, there were few zoos with fully-grown African and Asian Elephants housed together - off the top of my head, just Bristol, Chester, Dudley, London and Whipsnade at the time - and none of them seem to fit the bill.
 
robmv said:
I know what you mean: it was certainly similar.



I would tend to agree. Also, there were few zoos with fully-grown African and Asian Elephants housed together - off the top of my head, just Bristol, Chester, Dudley, London and Whipsnade at the time - and none of them seem to fit the bill.
Click to expand...

Did Flamingo land hold both in the 70's I'm sure I can remember my mum telling me she saw both their together? Also I thought I saw both in pictures at Windsor but I may be mistaken.
 
You're probably right about Flamingoland: elephants came and went at an incredible pace at the height of the Associated Pleasure Parks era.

Windsor did keep both species, but the first African did not arrive until 1981.

Neither collection, or any other safari park for that matter, had such an elaborate enclosure at this time: just basic sheds or barns.
 
Flamingo Land (still Flamingo Park in 1973) did have both African and Asian Elephants at the time (and until the early 1980s when Gomba the African died), but as robmv says the exhibit looked nothing like this. Going off the subject of this photograph slightly and returning to correspondence with robmv a good few years ago, I have since had confirmed the adult bull destroyed at Flamingo Park in 1973 was Hannibal - attempts to rehome him had failed and in those days of no bull-handling facilities he had become a probable human fatality waiting to happen.
 
sooty mangabey said:
Can I nominate this as the single least helpful contribution to a discussion on Zoochat?
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Look on the former holdings under african or african bush elephants in the UK. Its that simple
Flamingoland
Bristol
Southhampton zoo ?
All have had the species at the time.
 
Memphis certainly seems like a good fit. Looking at the list, they would have had one female Asian (Connie) and one female Africa (Hazel) in 1973.

The collective knowledge of the ZooChat community is a wonderful resource!
 
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