Peter Pans zoo

Just a note: I've moved this thread here until further information appears, presuming it refers to the former Peter Pans Playground zoo in Essex.
 
When I was a child in the early 1960s, there was an amusement park, Peter Pan's Playground, on the Southend seafront. Within the amusement park, there was a small zoo. The animals were housed permanently indoors in what was basically 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 of the building there were two very small cages; one housed a lioness, the other a sun bear. I remember various monkeys, including a baboon (although I didn't know its name was "Derek") and I recall an albino fallow deer too.
 
I remember it but not clearly. I would think I was about 8 and while I was thrilled to see a lion so close up at the back of my head alarm bells were ringing due to the very small size of the cage.

I hope it was a seasonal show and she had more room in the off season in winter quarters.
 
Tim May said:
. At the far end of the building there were two very small cages; one housed a lioness, the other a sun bear. I remember various monkeys, including a baboon (although I didn't know its name was "Derek") and I recall an albino fallow deer too.
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I remember seeing a mobile/travelling 'Zoo' in the basement of a department store(called Macelroy's)in Reading, Berkshire, when I was a child. That also had a single lioness, and possibly a deer also. Can't remember what else but wonder if there is any link with the above, they must have come from somewhere.
 
Tim May said:
When I was a child in the early 1960s, there was an amusement park, Peter Pan's Playground, on the Southend seafront. Within the amusement park, there was a small zoo. The animals were housed permanently indoors in what was basically 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 of the building there were two very small cages; one housed a lioness, the other a sun bear. I remember various monkeys, including a baboon (although I didn't know its name was "Derek") and I recall an albino fallow deer too.
Click to expand...

I worked at this Zoo in the early 70's in the school holidays and after school. The Zoo was owned by Emmie Fossett ) Fossetts Circus and her partner Jonny Yelding ( speedy the clown ). I used to bottle feed Derek the Baboon until he go to spiteful. There was also a penguin called percy and Julie the sunbear ( she clawed me on my right arm once and also two lions, when the lions were cubs we used to walk them round the old boating lake next to the pier, Jonny and I had them on dogs leads. Eventually the Zoo closed and all the animals went to Colchester Zoo and Emmie and Jonny moved to Skegness, in the early 80's Jonny died and was buried in Boston, we used to visit Emmie at Skegness and she was in her 90s when she died.

She often spoke about her past and how on reflection it was not kind to keep the animals how they did but they were circus people, born in a horse drawn caravan and both unable to read or write. She still had a mortgage at 90 as all the money they earn't went on the animals.
 
Tim May said:
When I was a child in the early 1960s, there was an amusement park, Peter Pan's Playground, on the Southend seafront. Within the amusement park, there was a small zoo. The animals were housed permanently indoors in what was basically 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 of the building there were two very small cages; one housed a lioness, the other a sun bear. I remember various monkeys, including a baboon (although I didn't know its name was "Derek") and I recall an albino fallow deer too.
Click to expand...
I visited that zoo in the 1970s. My parents had bought a paperback book called something like Wildlife 74 to 76 and it had a page or two about most zoos. At the back of the book was a paragraph or two about a number of smaller zoos. This was one of them.

I was shocked by the tiny cages and enclosures which were in many cases the size of a large handkerchief. I do not recall the bear (maybe it was gone by then) but the far end of the zoo definitely had a cage with two lions in.

The penguin enclosure stuck out in my mind with just a tiny place for the penguin to stand and barely enough water in the tiny pool for the poor thing to paddle.

I was beginning to think that I had dreamt about the place - although at the time I visited I am fairly sure that it used the name Southend Zoo.
 
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