Seaside Aquaria

Brum

Brum

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
I've been doing a bit of flicking through old family albums and was quite surprised at the amount of small aquariums I visited as a child. I remember several different Sea Life Centres and Poole Serpentarium clearly but I also seem to have been to a fair few smaller places.
Those that I do remember were usually little ramshackle buildings with locally caught species, for example dogfish, octopus, lobster, etc. The only three I can remember locations of are Lyme Regis, Cromer and St Ives/Hayle and I was wondering if any other UK ZooChatters have been to similar (or even the same) small aquariums?
 
I seem to remember one at Brixham?
Back in the 60s there was the Aquazoo on Great Yarmouth seafront -- I can't remember any actual fish, but there were some sort of fair sized crocodile in an inch or so of water, a Gila Monster [or was it a Beaed Lizard?] with sausages in with it for food, single male Drill and Mandrill -- I'm sure there were other mammals -- anyone else remember this place [which would win no prizes today]?
 
My grandparents visited AquaZoo, unfortunately that's as much as I can remember. I may well have been to an aquarium in Brixham as well, they all seem to merge into one as time goes by.
 
The Brixham one was there until about 2005, There used to be a nice little one in Fowey, don't know if it's still there, and i vaguely remember one in Newquay i visited in 1992. I'm hoping to visit one in Ilfracombe in April.
 
Johnny Morris. said:
The Brixham one was there until about 2005, There used to be a nice little one in Fowey, don't know if it's still there, and i vaguely remember one in Newquay i visited in 1992. I'm hoping to visit one in Ilfracombe in April.
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Yeah, I also went to the one in Newquay! :)
This was my main reason for starting this thread as I've been to dozens of these little places and it'd be nice to try and remember exactly which ones! :D
Also, it's great to share old memories that the rest of the world just wouldn't care about... ;)
 
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I've visited St Andrews Aquarium, don't know if this is little enough to make the list but I would say it's the smallest aquarium I have any memory of visiting :)
 
Brum said:
Yeah, I also went to the one in Newquay! :)
This was my main reason for starting this thread as I've been to dozens of these little places and it'd be nice to try and remember exactly which ones! :D
Also, it's great to share old memories that the rest of the world just wouldn't care about... ;)
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Was the one in Newquay, set in an Archway/lockup, set into the cliff or promenade?
 
I certainly visited the one in Brixham although I can't remember much about it. I've got a vague recollection of one in Looe in the mid 60s too.

There used to be one on the harbour at Mevagissey although I never went in it as we tended to visit outside the main holiday season, when it always seemed to be shut. Someone told us that it was stocked with specimens caught locally which were released back into the sea at the end of the tourist season but I've no idea whether that's true or not.

I visited Anglesey Sea Zoo at Brynsiencyn about 10-15 years ago - not too much to see as I recall but a pleasant enough place to visit and the lobster hatchery was quite interesting.
 
Johnny Morris. said:
Was the one in Newquay, set in an Archway/lockup, set into the cliff or promenade?
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I'm not sure, I think that there was a lot of wood around the entrance. It was trying to give off a nautical theme if that helps, pretty sure there was an anchor outside?
You've got to remember that I was about 7 at this point, I don't recall too many details! :)
 
Yes, there used to be quite a lot of these small seaside aquariums along the UK coast.

I recall my father taking me to one on the Southend seafront, near the entrance to the pier, when I was a young child in about 1963. I remember being very excited at seeing an albino lungfish there but, apart from that, I was somewhat disappointed as there was little else that could not be seen at a pet shop with a good aquatic section. I think that this aquarium closed shortly after my only visit (and it is not to be confused with the much later SeaLife Centre at Southend).

Also during the early nineteen sixties I visited the Aquarium & Mini Zoo at Cliftonville, near Margate, several times. (This establishment’s main claim to fame is that Gerald Durrell once worked there for a few weeks.) Years later another aquarium opened a short way along the coast at Walpole Bay although that, too, has now closed.

I also visited the Brixham Aquarium that FBBird mentioned. There used to be a small aquarium at Bournemouth too; I am not referring to the Bournemouth Oceanarium but to an earlier and much smaller aquarium.

In later years I visited the Poole Aquarium quite few times; this place is a sad loss as there were some interesting reptiles there. (It is one of the very few places where I’ve ever seen an elephant-trunk snake.)
 
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I visited three of these aquariums last week, at Fowey, Mevagissey and Port Isaac. You'd be hard pressed to spend more than 15 minutes in any of them, but i enjoyed all three.
 
Many of my family holidays as a child were spent on the Isle of Man. We regularly visited the aquarium in Port Erin, which was part of Liverpool University's marine biological station. I have just looked it up and have found that it closed in 2006. Although it only housed local species it was not bad (in my memory at least). I also have a vague memory of a commercial aquarium in Douglas, probably in the mid '60s, which was not good.

Alan
 
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