Blog posted by Mark Norris, October 2nd 2020 World War Zoo Gardens project (Newquay Zoo)
Posts Tagged ‘London Blitz’
Remembering London Zoo in the Blitz 26-27 September 1940
September 26, 2020Remembering London Zoo in the Blitz 26-27 September 1940
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/london-zoo-in-the-blitz-26-27-september-1940-from-magazines-and-press-articles/
Remembering the London Blitz 80 years on from September and October 1940
September 8, 2020Remembering London in The Blitz 80 Years on …
Remembering London Zoo in the Blitz 26-27 September 1940
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/london-zoo-in-the-blitz-26-27-september-1940-from-magazines-and-press-articles/
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Remembering Chessington Zoo bombed 2 October 1940
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/chessington-zoo-blitzed-2-october-1940-eyewitness-accounts/
Blog posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project (Newquay Zoo)
The Blitz begins 7 September 1940
September 7, 2018
The Times article republished and illustrated in War Illustrated November 15th 1940
The Blitz, during which Nazi Germany bombed London and other English cities in nighttime raids, lasted from Sept. 7, 1940, to May 1941.
The raids killed around 43,000 British civilians and left widespread destruction.
ZSL London Zoo was in the firing line for the first time in over twenty years since Zeppelin airship and airplane bombing of London in WW1.
Long existing zoos such as Belle Vue (Manchester) and Bristol Zoo had to put ARP (Air Raid Precautions) in place in 1939, along with newer 1930s zoos such as Chessington Zoo and Belfast Zoo.
https://www.zsl.org/blogs/artefact-of-the-month/zsl-london-zoo-during-world-war-two
Some animal propaganda (ZSL chimps with tin hats) in War Illustrated November 15th 1940
” The Zoo is in fact a microcosm of London …”
Chessington Zoo
Chessington Zoo was bombed on 2 October 1940 and several staff family members were killed. https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/chessington-zoo-blitzed-2-october-1940-eyewitness-accounts/
www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/80/a5333780.shtml
Lovely Chessington Zoo home movie 1940 footage, a grand day out presumably before the October 1940 bombing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHeqmMWs7VM
LR Brightwell’s wartime panda poster for London Zoo 1942, encouraging zoo visitors and pandas to return once the 1940/1 Blitz had quietened down. The “Off the Ration” exhibition encouraged Dig for Victory allotments like our World War Zoo Gardens but also encouraging zoo visitors grow your own food animals (rabbits, chickens, pigs).
Zoo Blitz Resources for Schools
Interesting Year 6 cross-curricular topic map for WW2 – Blitz and Battle of Britain (now defunct 2014/15 Inspire Curriculum, Cornwall)
The 1944/45 Blitz
Later in the war (1944/45) Chessington Zoo was hit by a Flying Bomb – as mentioned in our blog post https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/chessington-zoo-blitzed-2-october-1940-eyewitness-accounts/
You can see Chessington zoo and circus staff clearing up the aftermath on YouTube https://youtu.be/T9CiQvwP1TQ
London Zoo would also be affected by V1 and V2 bombing, including London Zoo veteran staff member Overseer W.W. T. Leney being killed in 1944 by a flying bomb at home. Nowhere in London or the Southeast was safe, night or day, at work or at home during the flying bomb raids. We shall mark the occasion 75 years on later next year on 25th November 1944 / 2019 with a fuller blogpost on Walter Leney.
The ZSL London Zoo staff war memorial:
Leney, William Walter Thomas, ZSL Overseer: Killed by flying bomb 25.11.1944
ZSL London Zoo veteran Keeper and Overseer William Leney at 65, old enough to have served in the First World war, was killed alongside his wife Kate Jane Leney (also 65) at 59 King Henry’s Road (Hampstead, Metropolitan Borough) by flying bomb. W.W.T. Leney and wife died on 25 November 1944. Several flying bombs are recorded as having fallen around the London Zoo area, close neighbour of RAF Regent’s Park.
Studying the Blitz and Wartime Life?
For more details about our schools wartime zoo / wartime life workshops for primary and secondary schools at Newquay Zoo, contact us via https://www.newquayzoo.org.uk/education-clubs/school-visits/primary
The last elephant left at the damaged Elephant house Berlin Zoo in 1943/44 after the Allied Air raids (Image source: Mark Norris, private collection from defunct press archive0.
Similar Allied air raids on German cities and industrial targets caused extensive damage to German zoos in city and railway areas, as personally and vividly described in zoo Director Lutz Heck’s Berlin Zoo memoir Animals – My Adventure. This will be the subject of a future blogpost as we approach the 75th anniversary of these raids in 1943 / 2018 and 1944 / 2019.
Remembering all those affected by the Blitz and air raids, 1940 /41 and 1944/45.
Blogposted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo gardens project, Newquay Zoo, 7th September 1940 / 2018.
Growing vegetables above and under ground – a strange wartime connection
May 8, 2018
screenshot from Messy Nessy’s blog piece on Growing Underground
Interesting blog post on the Messy Nessy Chic travel blog website about Growing Underground, a novel use for London’s old deep air raid shelters from WW2.
The blog post about reusing London ‘Deep Shelters’ as hydroponic salad farms also shows several interesting archive photos of their original air raid use by civilians.
https://www.facebook.com/growingunderground
http://growing-underground.com/
Billed as Zero Carbon Food, the underground London project cuts down on food miles and ‘plot to plate’ food minutes, but they are not quite as close to their consumers as our tiny zoo allotment to its animal customers here at Newquay Zoo. Admittedly they have 2.5 acres underground in London, we have a postage stamp tiny plot of a few metres as a display garden on a once scraggy old lawn edge near our Lion House. Jersey Zoo (Durrell Wildlife Trust) has also used an adjacent market garden for many years.
This Growing Underground idea reminds me of the Verticrop hydroponic experiment hosted at Paignton Zoo c. 2008/2009 for a couple of years during a fascinating trial period. An innovative way for growing fresh salad on site for the zoo animals?
https://www.bgci.org/resources/article/0784/
Verticrop (by Valcent) was put in experimental place at our sister zoo, Paignton Zoo in 2009 around the same time our above-ground World War Zoo garden allotment was set up here at Newquay Zoo.
I think I prefer to garden above ground and I have just planted the next lot of Ladybird poppies (for The Ribbon of Poppies Initiative). I’ve also planted more leek seedlings, cabbage, broad beans and rainbow chard to replace the snow and ice damage of February and March 2018. The planting areas are filling up nicely.
Maybe gardening underground you don’t get the peacocks and pigeons alongside snails as a plant eating ‘pest’ that I have to withstand here at the Zoo.
World War Zoo Garden planting areas, Newquay Zoo – after the snow and ice of the Beast from the East, March 2018, not much survived except colourful Rainbow or Rhubarb Chard.
Looking leafier – May 2018 after replanting
Poppy seedlings coming through, Ladybird poppy flower heads forming. Our part of the Ribbon Of Poppies for Armistice 1918 / 2018 is now in parts growing well.
However and wherever you garden, enjoy your day and your garden!
Blog posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo, 8 May 2018.
Chessington Zoo Blitzed 2 October 1940 – eyewitness accounts
October 2, 2015
Two wartime friends reunited again after nearly 75 years, 2014 – evacuee Peter Pollard (left) and Derek Witney, Chessington Zoo staff child (right) Photograph: Derek Witney
A chance conversation with the Hart family about their ‘zoo evacuee father / grandfather’ whilst picking crops in our wartime garden as part of our Junior Keeper experience back in 2008 led me to the story of Peter Pollard, Derek Witney – and the tragic story of Chessington Zoo on 2nd October 1940.
These are some of the previously unpublished memories I have been sent by Peter and his sister Wendy, along with the story of Derek Witney, wartime Chessington and Paignton Zoo staff child.
Ladies first …
Peter and Wendy Pollard, Chessington Zoo 1940 (Pollard family album)
Wendy Gothard (nee Pollard): 1940 Chessington memory
“As I was only four when we lived at Chessington Zoo in the Summer of 1940, my memories could best be described as snapshots, but they are very clear. I was allowed complete freedom to play around the zoo all day long, without any adult supervision, and apart from scraped knees I came to no harm.
I loved the rehearsals for the circus. I would sit on the bench closest to the ring, all on my own – magic. Sometimes there would be cubs born to the big cats, and I shall never forget sitting on the ground and having a cub carefully settled on my lap for a cuddle.
The slides in the playground both thrilled me and scared me to bits. They were very high, and of course even taller for a small person. The older children would go down head first, but I never managed that.
Our caravan in the corner of the field was amazingly quite small. With gas mantle lighting the temperature ranged from ninety odd degrees near the ceiling to freezing at floor level. My mother would stand ironing in her bra and sheepskin boots. In the floor there was a small trapdoor which my parents would open for ventilation until an air raid warden came knocking saying he could see the light from a long way off. With several windows it was difficult not to have a single chink of light showing.
I remember well the night of the bombing when the big air raid shelter was hit.
The small brick shelter is clear in my mind, but I have no picture of the big shelter. The next day I was forbidden to go the zoo, and I knew something terrible had happened there, so perhaps my mind blotted it out.
Later my mother told me that the bomb rolled down the steps, but they did not tell me that my playmate [Derek Witney],* the son of the zoo manager, was among those killed.
We did not know whether the Germans had just unloaded a few bombs on something suspicious or were actually aiming for a munitions factory just up the road, but my father was in a great hurry to move us away from the zoo in case they returned.
However, one of the bombs had made a crater in the lane from the zoo to the main road, and he had a big problem getting the caravan out. The animals were evacuated to [Whipsnade].* They were taken away two by two , an unusual sight as the elephants plodded along the main road.
My time at the zoo is among my most cherished memories. It was my garden, my playground ,and even when the visitors were there, it was still my zoo. Fortunately, they went home.”
Wendy Gothard (nee Pollard), Chichester, December 2008.
Wendy Pollard and Derek Witney, Chessington Zoo 1940 (Pollard family archive)
Researching this story, I struggled to reconcile this memory with any WW2 casualty lists, but as it later proved it was not Derek Witney who was killed on the night but another of her zoo playmates. Derek Witney thinks the elephants were headed somewhere else- Devon!
Aerial detail of Chessington Zoo from Alan Ashby’s We Went to the Zoo Today: The Golden Age of Zoo Postcards (2009)
Chessington Memory – Peter Pollard (born 1930)
By the end of August 1939 I was approaching my ninth birthday, my sister Wendy was five years younger and we lived with our parents in a three year old detached house by the River Thames at Richmond. However when war was declared I was not actually there, having been sent for safety to The Linns, a 1000 acre dairy farm outside Dumfries, owned by my Uncle Alex and Aunt Kathleen. It was in a window seat at The Linns on 3rd September 1939 that I listened to the historic broadcast by Neville Chamberlain which ended “and I have to tell you now that no such undertaking (to withdraw from Poland) has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany” …
The rest of the family were not cowering from the bombs in the bolt hole under the stairs. My father let the house for the duration of the war to a Czech diplomat called Pospisil, bought a small caravan and sited it in the car park at Chessington Zoo which I think was still open but very quiet. Later on a bomb did land on Richmond Palace across the river and the blast damaged our house, but fortunately it was empty at the time.
My rough sketch notes from my conversation with Derek Witney on 1940s locations, identified with Derek on a more recent 1960s 1970s map of Chessington Zoo from the online Chessington Zoo.info website
Chessington Zoo – 1939/40 memory by Peter Pollard
In 1939 the zoo proper occupied the same area as it does now, although the animals and attractions were very different. There was one small field for parking on the North Boundary, whereas now there is parking for thousands of cars at both North and South ends. At the heart of the Zoo was “The Burnt Stub”, a beautiful old manor house occupied by the owner Reginald Goddard.
The Southeast quadrant of the site was mainly a vast playground of high slides, oscillating roundabouts and swing boats.
In the centre of the site, and immediately in front (i.e. South) of “The Burnt Stub” was a small permanent circus with stabling and props rooms, and also the terminus and workshops for the miniature railway. This was no land train but a genuine miniature locomotive, all steam and polished brass, which took visitors around the site on narrow gauge tracks.
Just to the west of the Burnt Stub was an odd construction, a cafeteria room with large cage attached to the left and right hand sides for lions and tigers respectively, while beyond that was a small lake for water birds like flamingos.
I returned from [school at Dumfries Academy in] Scotland in the Spring of 1940, and had free access to all parts of the zoo, even the private areas. This was quite perfect for a boy of nine. I helped to feed all the wild animals, and the ponies in the circus. I helped backstage in the circus during the performances, hosed down the elephants, helped to polish and maintain the rolling stock and rode the rails whenever I wanted., and spent hours in the huge playground.
But it didn’t last.
Satellite mapping of Chessington Zoo Bombsight.org 1940/41 bomb mapping
The Chessington Raid – memory by Peter Pollard
There were two air raid shelters in the zoo.
The first was a small brick surface shelter like a tool store, with room for four camp beds, which was used by Mr. Goddard and his family. It was not blast resistant.
The second was a proper shelter, excavated four feet into the ground and covered over with arched corrugated sheeting and the excavated earth to five feet above ground. There was enough room for about twenty people, sleeping on wooden shelves. This was where my family and I spent our nights, sharing with the zoo keepers and their families. It was by uncomfortable, with no privacy and little sanitation.
One day in the summer of 1940 Mr Goddard who owned a second zoo in Paignton [* Goddard had entered a wartime business arrangement with Herbert Whitley at Paignton Zoo] to which he had transferred some animals, told my father that he would be making a short inspection visit to Devon, and invited my family to use his shelter while he was away.
That same night a German Bomber flew over and mistaking the zoo buildings for a nearby army camp in the moonlight, dropped four bombs.
The first breached the railings of the water bird enclosure, releasing dazed birds to wander round the Zoo.
The second blew out the cafeteria, leaving the big cats on either side uninjured and angry but fortunately still secure.
The third landed on the driveway and did little damage but the fourth penetrated straight through the roof of the big shelter, exploded and killed every body inside, including our friend ‘Derek Witney’.* [Here Peter has made a fortunate memory slip after 70 years]
Our family in the flimsy brick shelter was unscathed, and I didn’t even wake up.
Chessington wartime memory by Peter Pollard.
Bombsight.org 1940 /41 bomb map of Chessington Zoo with one bomb clearly on the zoo site. Image : bombsight.org
The aftermath – a memory by Peter Pollard
My father decided that we were still too close to the Luftwaffe bombing campaign on London and hastily removed us to a farm at Christmas Common in Oxfordshire where we had only well water and a two mile walk each way back to the shops in Watlington.
This was a bit too primitive, and we came back as far as a farm at Hedgerley, between Beaconsfield and Slough. The farm was owned by the Halse family and it was Brenda Halse who taught me how to trap and skin rabbits. It was still a two mile walk each way to the good shops in Beaconsfield but at least it was sometimes (depending on the weather) possible to get a bus into Farnham Common where I attended a small primary school for the Autumn term of 1940.
In January 1941 I was sent off to Board at Derby Grammar School, which was settled in a holiday camp in the wilds of Derbyshire near Matlock. But that is another story …
Previously unpublished Chessington wartime memory by Peter and Wendy Pollard, written up for the World War Zoo Gardens project November 2008 (with thanks to the Hart family).
The dustjacket cover to Frank Foster’s circus autobiography Pink Coats, Spangles and Sawdust (Stanley Paul, late 1940s) Image: Mark Norris, private collection
Frank Foster’s account
Frank Foster, “Pink Coat, Spangles and Sawdust”, published by Stanley Paul 1949?
Frank Foster was a circus performer, ringmaster and equestrian director who wrote one of the few accounts of wartime Chessington Zoo. R.S. Goddard (or ‘RSG ‘ as Derek Witney still calls him) died very suddenly at Christmas 1946 and few archive records have survived throughout the changing ownership of Chessington Zoo.
P.158. “After we had arrived back at Chessington twenty-one bombs fell in the grounds. One was a direct hit on a shelter and killed three attendants.
Two high explosive bombs dropped within a hundred yards of the elephants quarters. With lions, tigers, polar bears and many other animals to look after, this was an anxious time.
Apart from the possibility of their being killed there was the danger that cages might be blasted open and occupants escape into the surrounding countryside.
Fortunately this has only happened to the penguins’ cage: their quarters were completely demolished.
Searching in the debris for their remains, we were astonished to see them walking towards us, like Charlie Chaplins, along the miniature railway track.
They’d been blown clear and without hurt. Later came the buzz bombs …”
These blitzed penguins are possibly some of the ‘dazed water birds’ that Peter Pollard mentioned. (Derek Witney chatting in October 2015 also thinks this might be a bit of characteristic circus story embroidery by Goddard or Foster).
Frank Foster’s 1949 book is out of print and hard to obtain, so I have scanned the 4 relevant pages about wartime:
Tracing the Chessington Zoo Casualties of 2 October 1940
For a while I could find no trace of a Derek Whitney being killed at Chessington Zoo or a bombing date. Now thanks to the CWGC records being online, I have found the identity of the child and other zoo staff sadly killed that day.
The three casualties recorded CWGC as “Died at Chessington Zoo Shelter” on 2nd October 1940 by the Municipal Borough of Surbiton are:
- Annie Page, aged 37, the Cottage, Zoo, Chessington. Daughter of Mrs Todd, 128 Woodside Road, Westborough, Guildford, wife of Reginald Page.
2. Ronald Page, aged 10, son of Reginald and Annie Page.
3. Elizabeth Arnold, aged 54, of the Lodge, Chessington Zoo, wife of George Arnold.
Several family photos of the Page family, Ronald, Reginald and Annie can be found on the Ancestry website.
A BBC audio clip of Peter Pollard 2010
There is a short sound clip of Peter from 2010 online talking about the bombing on a BBC Radio Cornwall report as well as a brief paragraph:
“For a while Peter Pollard found himself living in a caravan in the car park of Chessington Zoo at the age of nine in the summer of 1940. He shared his memories with the Zoo for the exhibition.
Reflecting on the time Peter said: “It was wonderful for a small boy of nine. I had a complete run of the zoo, I helped in the circus, maintained a miniature railway, they had an enormous playground there, it was perfect, it was heaven.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cornwall/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8539000/8539314.stm
Chessington Zoo advert 1937, Zoo and Animal Magazine (Image source: Mark Norris private collection)
Researching and confirming this wartime story
Curiously the Pollard’s 9 & 5 year old memories seem to suggest that they quickly left Chessington for safety somewhere else and were told their playmate ‘Derek Whitney‘ [sp] was killed in the bombing.
What they did not know until 70 years later was that Derek had left that day with his father, the park’s engineer, to take some animals and the miniature railway down to Paignton Zoo, a story Derek confirmed when he visited me at Newquay Zoo last year. Leopards, lions and tigers were mentioned as travelling down. Mr. Witney was there on behalf of Chessington Zoo’s Mr. Goddard to help Mr. Herbert Whitley open his zoo up again (see late August 1940 press cuttings) from its early wartime closed state.
The Miniature Railway by the way is still going strong at Paignton Zoo. Mr Witney, Derek’s father, was the Chessington Zoo Engineer and organised taking one train and the track down to Paignton Zoo. According to Derek, this train returned at the end of the war when the animals returned. It was obviously popular as the miniature railway was reconstructed postwar. Life in wartime Paignton Zoo sounded a little makeshift, the family lived in a caravan for about a year.
I first had a feeling that the Pollard’s account was slightly wrong after 70 years when I couldn’t find a CWGC or death record for a ‘Derek Whitney’.
Having been reading the two Chessington history books by the late C.H. Keeling of the Bartlett Society and some further research on this little reported 1940 incident (compared to the buzz bombs of 1944), it suggests that a “Derek Whitney of Burgh Heath Surrey, who literally grew up around Chessington’s Circus” (p. 29 , The Chessington Story, CH Keeling) had met Clinton Keeling the author to talk about the 1935 Chessington Circus blaze where some circus horses were killed. So unless Clinton Keeling had met a ghost …
This set me thinking that something in the Pollard stories did not tie up with what happened and led to reuniting Peter and Derek 70 plus years later!
The ‘forgotten name’ of their playmate casualty was young Ronald Page.
Herbert Whitley as Derek Witney would have known him. Source: Paignton Zoo
Meeting up with Derek Witney and family to hear their stories
In 2014 I was lucky enough to meet up several times with Derek Witney at Newquay Zoo and also when he came in the company of wife and grandson to my wartime zoo and botanic gardens Kew Guild talk at Kew Gardens. It was odd to be able to put his picture of being reunited with Peter Pollard on screen, tell his story and then point to Derek in the audience!
The Witney family visiting me at Newquay Zoo, full of a lifetime of stories of working with animals, 2014. (Derek Witney and his wife on the right) Image: Mark Norris
Derek told me more about his meeting with Peter, who is now suffering from health problems. Derek also remembers meeting Herbert Whitley wearing a battered pair of old white plimsolls at Paignton Zoo (Whitley was famous for his scruffy or eccentric dress sense). Derek’s other family memories of this period include:
“Eight or nine people in the shelter that night it was hit included my grandmother who was keeping house while we were on our way down to Paignton with a convoy of animals having left that morning.
The alarm was raised by two of the zoo staff who were in another part of the shelter.
I was not aware of any animals going to Whipsnade for the duration of the war but this could well be true.
What I am absolutely certain is that the Elephants remained at the park and worked in the circus during the whole of the war. I know this to be true as I looked after them as part of my duties in my school holidays.
Frank Foster came to Chessington at the start of the war from Bertram Mills Circus along with some of the animal trainers and remained there until the end of hostilities when he and some of the artists returned to the Bertram Mills circus while at Chessington Frank was responsible for the circus smooth running only.”
Derek Witney, personal comments, 2014
As we pored over past maps of Chessington Zoo in the past (http://www.chessingtonzoo.info/zoo-maps.html) to locate where the shelters were, Derek mentioned that the surviving brick built shelters remained for many years in various roles such as tool sheds, something Peter said they looked much like.
“I hope that this will further inform you of life at Chessington”: I am currently chatting to Derek Witney about more of his wartime memories of Paignton Zoo.
This temporary wartime expedient business merger between Goddard’s Chessington Zoo and Whitley’s Primley / Paignton Zoo is not a well-studied area and I will post more on this blog as I uncover more.
“You Will Enjoy Yourselves Here!” These documents remain in the Archive at Paignton Zoo and we will post further research about them in time.
Derek Witney, one of the remaining Chessington / Paignton Zoo wartime staff children, mentioned to people after my Kew Guild talk about the GIs at Paignton Zoo and their big Anti Aircraft AA guns, being there at Paignton Zoo protecting the Clennon Gorge GI camp in the run up to D-Day.
This was further supported by Dave Ellacott, Reserves Warden, Primley park and Clennon Gorge, who mentioned
“As for GI leftovers I have not found anything which would have hinted at their presence. Google earth makes a claim that there was a gun emplacement in Primley Park which makes sense as this is on an elevated position with good 360 views of Torbay.”
Lots more stories to follow …
Remembering Ronald and Annie Page and Elizabeth Arnold, “Died at Chessington Zoo Shelter”, 2 October 1940.
Research posted by Mark Norris at Newquay Zoo, World War Zoo Gardens Project.
London Zoo in the Blitz 26 / 27 September 1940 from magazines and press articles
September 28, 2015This week sees the anniversary of the London Blitz affecting London Zoo, not just on the 26/27th September but for many anxious nights to come. Slowly press coverage and press releases trickled out, reassuring people that not much harm or damage had been done.
Our first report is from an Australian newspaper archive, itself reprinting a South African source? World news indeed!
LONDON ZOO BOMBINGS.
Animals’ Remarkable Escapes.
In London’s famous zoo elephants and monkeys, zebras and parrots have had remarkable escapes from indiscriminate Nazi bombing. The keepers (according to the “Cape Argus” Cape Town), have become amateur salvage men. The zoo suffered the disastrous effects of nearly 100 incendiaries and 14 other bombs recently, and while most of them fell either on paths or open spaces, a few hit buildings.
Monkey Hill, the ostrich and crane house, the restaurant, zebra house, aquarium, one of the aviaries and the antelope house have all been damaged. The aquarium keeper has been unofficially made foreman of the salvage gang. He has other keepers to help him. Jubilee and Jacky, the chimpanzees who were born at the zoo, are both still at the Zoo, with George and Chiney. They have been moved from the “chimp” house into the monkey house. So far the only animals which have escaped from the quarters through bombing are some monkeys and zebras and three humming birds.
There was great excitement the night a bomb fell on the zebra house. The building received a direct hit, and every one expected to find the animals dead. Not only were they alive and fit, but one ran a mile, as far as Gloucester Gate, with keepers in chase. One of the monkeys enjoyed a long spell of freedom. For three days it explored the Park, but towards the end of the third it returned to the Hill for food. There were about 30 monkeys set free by a hit scored on the Hill, but the keepers knew that if the animals were left alone they would soon return for food, and they did so. Although half a ton of concrete was blown over a parapet by the bomb, none of the monkeys was hurt. Fortunately, all the fish had been removed from the aquarium at the beginning of the war, so that none of them was hit when a bomb went through the roof.
Reprinted from The West Australian, Saturday 28 December 1940
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/47300068
This magazine article in our collection is again a reprint of another paper – The Times – but with exclusive photographs for The War Illustrated magazine and makes interesting reading.
The zebra house shown is wrecked and its escaped zebra is ‘pictured’ later in our blog post in an unusual way, painted by a war artist.
“The Zoo is in fact a microcosm of London. Hitler’s bombs cause a certain amount of damage to it, and a considerable amount of inconvenience; but they have not destroyed the morale or the routine of its inhabitants, animal or human, and it continues to function with a very respectable degree of efficiency”
In our August blogpost on the August 1940 edition of Boy’s Own Paper, we mentioned an article by Sydney Moorhouse advertised for the following month on London Zoo and zoos at war, September 1940. The kind donation of this September issue to me from Norman Boyd, a fan of the zoo artist L.R. Brightwell means that I can now share this piece with you.
It should be read like The Times / The War Budget article on London Zoo’s blitz above as a reassuring bit of wartime propaganda in itself.
The Boy’s Own Paper account of zoos at war was published the month that London Zoo was blitzed but written well before September 1940.
London Zoo’s preparation for War can be seen in some photographs taken from their Animal and Zoo Magazine in November 1939 in their library and archive blog :
http://www.zsl.org/blogs/artefact-of-the-month/zsl-london-zoo-during-world-war-two
The wartime /mid 1940s map we have for London Zoo in our collection mentions the Camel House “as damaged by enemy action” but it’s still standing today!
When Zebras roamed Camden Town during the Blitz
One of the remarkable sights of wartime London in the 1940 Blitz was an escaped zebra during the London bombing raid of 26/27 September 1940.
There is an excellent personal account of it by London Zoo Director Julian Huxley in his memoirs and snippets of what the Blitz was like for zoo staff on duty:
One night about 11 o’clock we heard a stick of bombs exploding nearer and nearer to our shelter, until the last bomb shook the foundations of the building.
I put on my tin hat and went across the Zoo to find that five bombs had hit the grounds, the Zoo’s water main had been cut and the restaurant was burning …
Firemen soon turned up and I conducted them to the Sea Lion Pool, the only source of water left, which they nearly drained before the flames were under control …
taken from Julian Huxley, Memories. Julian Huxley was the Director of the Zoo at the time.
The incident has been remembered also in a painting by war artist Carel Weight, now in the Manchester City Art Gallery.
London Zoo area in the Bombsight.org ww2 website
The amazing Bombsight.org blitz map for 1940/41 also shows where bombs fell in and around the zoo, a website well worth exploring.
The Blitz on Britain’s cities and its zoos, remembered.
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project, Newquay Zoo.
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