The rise and fall of Whitley Zoo...

[dutchman]

Thousands of people in Coventry and Warwickshire will remember childhood visits to Coventry Zoo at Whitley.



Apart from the animals, one of their overriding memories is likely to be the giant fibreglass Zulu warrior that towered above the entrance to the site now occupied by the Coventry & Warwickshire Health and Racquets Club in Abbey Road.

The zoo, located on part of Whitley Common, opened to a fanfare in 1966 and closed in 1980 after running into financial difficulties.

From the outset, it was dogged with problems. Its opening was delayed after planning concerns. The site, wedged between a housing estate and a busy road, had no main services and was found to be covered with large quantities of rubble left over from the war, including stones from Coventry Cathedral.

The land was owned by the city council but the zoo was established by an independent company whose directors included brothers Dick and John Chipperfield, cousins of the circus family.

Some of the zoo's early arrivals were animals retiring from the circus.

One of its first was Sukie, an elderly elephant who had hauled timber in the forests of India before being bought by the Chipperfields and groomed to become a circus star.

The zoo opened its gates on April 5 1966, with an entry fee of three shillings (15 pence) for adults and one shilling and sixpence (seven-and-a-half pence) for children.

In its first week of opening, 8,000 visitors converged on the seven-and-a-half acre site in one day to see Sukie; Zak, the baby leopard; monkeys playing on an artificial Gibraltar rock and Canadian brown and Russian black bears, allegedly enemies, living side by side in the bear garden.

The rush of people was so great that extra gates had to be opened to let everyone in.

Harry the hippo arrived some days later, along with two bad-tempered porcupines and a kangaroo which caused pandemonium when he found he had to share his enclosure with an ostrich.

The following September, Harry, the two-ton hippo, mauled one of the keepers.

Richard McCormack, aged 17, from Bell Green, was left semi-conscious and with serious internal injuries after Harry charged while being shut in his house so his run could be cleaned.

The teenager was rescued from the grip of Harry's jaws by the head keeper John Voce who remembered the animal had been in the circus.

He told the Coventry Telegraph at the time: "I shouted 'Open, open' and immediately Harry opened his jaws and the boy fell out."

The hippo's departure from his apparently normally docile self to enraged wild animal was later blamed by keepers on toothache.

A new safety barrier was installed to protect those who locked Harry in his house at cleaning time.

The young keeper recovered from his injuries but resigned from the zoo and became a milkman.

A couple of years later, Ringo, a 45-stone Russian brown bear, wreaked havoc in the Whitley Common area when he escaped from the park.

Around 30 policemen were dispatched in the search for him and, according to the Telegraph, fought with the bear - before it made its own way back to the zoo.

Vandals were blamed for letting him out.

A few months later, fire broke out in the zoo's feed house. Animal feed was destroyed, refrigerators were put out of action and hundreds of pounds worth of ice cream melted on the city's hottest afternoon of the year.

Emergency rations had to be shipped in to make sure the animals didn't go hungry.

A couple of years later, two deer escaped from the zoo park within minutes of arriving after leaping over a nine-feet fence. There is no record of whether they were ever recaptured.

A few months later, five-year-old David Edwards from Ryton-on-Dunsmore was clawed on the head by an African leopard during a birthday visit to the zoo.

The boy had wandered through a safety barrier door left open during cleaning of the animal's cage and was caught by a claw emerging through the bars.

As the boy cried out in terror, his father lunged at the cage with his rolled umbrella to make the leopard let go.

David was taken to hospital and treated for cuts - and later talked to the Telegraph about the "naughty tiger" that had scratched him.

In 1974, a pregnant wild boar and one of a mating pair escaped from the zoo and was killed by an express train near the railway bridge in Humber Lane.

Although not valuable in terms of money, it was a loss to the zoo as weeks before five of their boars had been destroyed because of the high cost of feeding them. The zoo was starting to feel the pinch.

By 1976, the Telegraph was reporting big problems at the zoo. An article in June of that year recorded that the place "appears to be on the slippery slope to ruin."

Complaints were regularly reaching the newsdesk about its shabbiness, lack of amenities and the conditions in which the animals lived.

"Coventry Zoo is no longer a credit to the city whose citizens are generally either hostile or indifferent to it," reads our archive.

A visit from Telegraph reporters found the 150 or so animals and birds healthy, well fed and cared for, but their quarters cramped and uninviting, with cages and runs no more than barely adequate and in a disgraceful state of repair and decoration. Public barriers were also shaky enough to be a potential hazard.

The site was covered with litter and the flower beds unkempt. There were few customers and a skeleton staff.

Director Billy Chipperfield is reported as saying that the zoo attracted about 90,000 visitors a year and just about kept its head above water, but was in need of investment.

"Just because your name is Chipperfield, people think you're a millionaire. We just happen to be related to them, that's all," he was quoted as saying.

The following year, customs and excise officials sought a compulsory winding up order over VAT debts. But the case was dismissed in the High Court after the debts were paid.

By 1979 the zoo had been sold to London businessman Gerry Hambrook who launched a campaign to raise £100,000 from industry and the public to relaunch it as Coventry Zoological Gardens and create a children's leisure park and appealed for volunteer labour at the site.

But by April 1980 the zoo was in the hands of a consortium with plans to turn it into a £1million racquets centre. The animals were sold or moved.

The site is now home to Coventry & Warwickshire Health and Racquets Club.

The Zulu warrior that stood guard at the entrance was made in Scunthorpe in the 1960s and given to the zoo for reasons no-one could quite remember.

The statue was to have been moved to another site but is understood to have broken up when workmen tried to move it.

[rebbonk]

It also had an extremely foul mouthed parrot.

[Spuffler]

Strangely, I don't recall anything about Whitley Zoo! But I do recall the little set of bird cages in the Memorial Park, complete with birds like golden pheasants and similar. I guess that isn't there any more, but have no idea when it went. I remember it about 1963 or 4.

[NormK]

The Cathedral rubble talked about was demolition rubble we used to send them,anything that could be used to build the place...

[dutchman]

Head of Coventry Zoo's Zulu statue set for public display



The head of a statue of a Zulu warrior which used to stand at a zoo's entrance will be put on public display after it was bought by an antiques dealer.

The 35ft (10.7m) monument was seen by visitors at Coventry Zoo until the attraction closed in 1980.

Most of it was crushed apart from the statue's head and the tip of the spear and was bought this month by Tony Pedley.

"It's such an iconic piece of Coventry history," he said.

Mr Pedley found out about the pieces of the statue when he said a friend had called him about a man he had known who "had it in his loft for 30 years".

He runs The 888 Emporium in Coventry, a shop for antiques, collectables and memorabilia.

When the statue and spear tip are delivered to him later this week, he said they would go on a wall at the shop "in pride of place" but did not want to reveal how much he had paid for them.

"The crown's broken so I've got a guy making me a bit of a new crown and we just need to give it a bit of TLC," Mr Pedley said.

"I just want to keep part of it for history."