I grow up in east London so used to visit Southend quite a bit and seem to recall there being an aquarium along with all the other various attraction on the sea front which would have been mid 1960's
I made some enquiries about the aquarium at the Southend Museum. I was told the building that housed the aquarium was demolished in 1965, although the aquarium had possibly closed a year or two prior to that; unfortunately, though, they didn’t have the exact dates as to when it closed.
I think my only visit was in 1963, but after almost half-a-century, I am not completely sure of the date. Given that my sole visit was so long ago, and that I was only a small child at the time, I doubt my recollections of the Southend Aquarium are very objective.
However, I remember being very disappointed by it. The only other aquariums that I’d visited at this time were the aquarium at London Zoo and the aquarium on the Brighton seafront; the Southend Aquarium compared unfavourably to both of these. Most of the exhibits were either fancy goldfish or small freshwater tropical fish of the type frequently kept in home aquariums; there was little on display that could not be seen in a pet-shop with a good aquatic section.
The only specimen that really impressed me – and I still have a vivid memory of it all these years later – was an albino lungfish.
wasn't there a small zoo as well?
Yes, I remember the zoo in “Peter Pan’s Playground” on the Southend seafront. This small animal collection survived longer than the aquarium and I visited several times in the early and mid 1960s. The animals were housed permanently indoors, in a long wooden hut with a row of cages along each side wall and another row of cages down the middle. At the far end, opposite the entrance, there were two small cages with heavy bars, one housed a sun bear, the other a lioness. (I believe that there was once a pair of lions, but I only ever saw the lioness, never the male.)
