Autumn colours behind the ZSL staff war memorial, London Zoo, November 2010 (Photo: Kate Oliver)
Remembrance Week or Poppy Week is upon us again in the Somme Centenary Year 2016.
Here is a quick round up of some of our WW1 blogposts as part of the World War Zoo Gardens project, written or updated since 2009.
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/ww1-related-posts/
I hope you find something of interest here.
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.
Hello again – at long last! It’s been over 6 months since my last blog post and a whole growing season in 2012 has come and gone in the wartime garden at Newquay Zoo. And I missed it all …
Mr Bloom visits the World War Zoo Dig For Victory wartime garden at Newquay Zoo, 2 April 2012 with project manager Mark Norris.
April 2012 started really well with a visit to Newquay Zoo from popular Children’s TV gardener Mr. Bloom. After an exhausting day signing autographs and singing songs from his show, he popped over to see our award-winning World War Zoo wartime garden plot.
Somewhere in the midst of the RHS National Gardening week in April I downed tools mid planting and didn’t come back. I have a good excuse (and an impressive scar to prove it) as I have been offline and away from my daily work and wartime garden at Newquay Zoo since mid April with ill-health requiring an operation.
So whilst I recovered offline and at home, my zoo colleagues got the 2012 harvest in for the zoo animals – a small harvest, for the weather this growing season was generally poor.
Convalescence and nursing a still aching wound or operation scar have taught me a few things. Patience, for one. I also realise how physically difficult and slow their recovery and return to work would be for zoo keepers injured during the war.
It’s poppy time again and time to spare a thought for keepers and animals affected by war over the last century. Below the list of keepers killed in action on the Belle Vue Zoo gardens staff memorial in Gorton Cemetery Manchester is a postscript, keepers who died after 1918 from the effects of war service. My lungs are now healthy again but keepers and zoo staff at Belle Vue Zoo such as Bernard Hastain were passing away years later from the after-effects of being gassed in the First World War. You can read more about these men in last November’s blog posts, 2011.
I had hoped whilst convalescing off work to catch up on researching wartime zoos and botanic gardens for our forthcoming book but morphine (an age-old pain-killer familiar to injured troops) doesn’t do much to help you concentrate on reading. I did come across some interesting sections in books I was lent by kind friends on country houses in wartime. Some of those estates with animal collections had an important wartime role, as did those later to be opened postwar as stately homes and safari parks. Some such as Harewood House (still with a popular bird collection) were convalescent homes like the one you might have seen in Downton Abbey series 2.
Others such as Woburn housed London Zoo’s priceless library collection safe from the London Blitz and later housed a secret Wrennery of WRNS (navy women) working as part of the Bletchley Park codebreaking network. Knowsley Safari Park at Prescot in Merseyside still bears the scars on its rough ground of tank and artillery training.
It was the loss of wartime heirs, shortage of staff, crippling death duties, lack of wartime maintenance and the destructive effects of troops stationed in these houses that saw many estates broken up and sold off, houses demolished. Others opened to the public and developed leisure attractions to pay their way, such as Longleat and its famous safari park. Maybe Downton Abbey series 47 or some such will see the grounds full of roaming lions or elephants …
So whilst wartime was a difficult time for zoos, and often fatal for their staff and animals, it had the surprising effect in postwar Britain of creating more zoos and wildlife parks when old estates were sold or opened to the public with animals as part of the attraction, alongside the house. Marwell Zoo is one such surviving example, created in the 1960s by John Knowles and once home to a secret wartime airfield.
It’s Poppy month and also the 7oth anniversary of El Alamein in 1942. Church bells silent since 1939 were rung in Britain to celebrate El Alamein, featured in the wartime film Desert Victory. Fighting between the Desert Rats and the Afrika Korps in the Western desert of North Africa claimed the life of one zoo keeper or aquarist, Peter Felix Falwasser of Chester Zoo, Yorkshire born despite his foreign-sounding name. A Gunner in the 1st Royal Horse Artillery, he died of wounds from the Tobruk battles aged 26 on 22 December 1942. He’s buried in Heliopolis War cemetery, Cairo in Egypt, a wartime hospital cemetery beautifully maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Chester Zoo Archive Zoo News, 1942/3
We hope to gain more such glimpses of wartime life from his letters home to his zoo colleagues from recent donations to the Chester Zoo archive by founder’s daughter June Mottershead, herself a wartime zoo keeper as set out in her story, Reared in Chester Zoo.
Whilst I was convalescing, I saw the Wartime Farm series on BBC TV and spotted on a leaflet for improvised toys for Christmas a handmade wooden toy engine just like one in our World War Zoo Gardens wartime collection.
So whilst zoo gift shops are full of lovely present ideas and expereinces, this Christmas we hope to informally twin our wartime allotment with a sustainable modern one through the gift of an allotment somewhere in the developing world through the Oxfam Unwrapped gifts scheme. There’s some great ideas for gifts and well worth a look at www.oxfamunwrapped.com
Signing off until the next post , hopefully only for a few weeks this time … Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.
Back view of the ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, 11 November 2010 (Photo: Kate Oliver, ZSL Education)
Autumn colours behind the ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, November 2010 (Photo: Kate Oliver, ZSL Education)
As a follow up to our previous article about war memorials in zoos and botanic gardens, Kate Oliver at ZSL London Zoo and other colleagues sent me recent photographs of the plaques and memorial itself on a suitably grey November day at London Zoo, Regent’s Park. The stories behind the names are outlined in our previous blog and research continues, using some material from the ZSL archives.
After last Sunday, the memorial will have some poppy wreaths at the base from the ZSL staff. It will also be featured on an interactive map at the excellent http://www.londonremembers.com website of London statues and memorials. Lest we forget…
Names of the fallen ZSL staff from the First World War, ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, 2010
Names of the five fallen ZSL staff from the Second World War, ZSL war memorial, London Zoo, 2010
In our next blog about life in the wartime zoo gardens, how to celebrate a wartime Christmas and how people made their own toys, a little different from the Victorian way we will be celebrating Christmas at Newquay Zoo this year www.newquayzoo.org.uk
For more about London Zoo past and present, visit www.zsl.org
For more about the World War Zoo gardens project, read our previous posts or contact us via the comments page.
“LOST IN THE GARDEN OF THE SONS OF TIME”
Two poppy crosses in memory of zoo staff of all nations lost or injured worldwide in 1914-18 and 1939-45 amongst the growing food plants of the World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo
November 2013 and March 2014: please see the updated information on ZSL London Zoo casualties from WW1 from this blog post which has been updated with new research
NOVEMBER
is always a bit of a solemn month for me in the garden with the darker days earlier, the lost hour of summer time, leaves fallen; it is also Remembrance Sunday, poppies and Armistice Day.
One of many overwhelming lists of names in stone. Arras Memorial to the missing with no known graves from the Arras offensive of 1917 and (foreground) CWGC individual graves Image: cwgc.org
At Newquay Zoo, there is one of the noisier two minutes silence in the nation if the maroon bangs go off at 11 o’clock in Newquay, as this sets off all the zoo animals calling out.
At London Zoo, at memorials and churches all over Britain and Europe, people will stop and gather, think and reflect on the extraordinary, almost incomprehensible loss of life in wartime which affected so many walks of life including zoos and botanic gardens.
Belle Vue zoo’s sadly vandalised war memorial, Gorton Cemetery. Manchester lists their First World War dead – a tiny glimpse of the losses of men from zoos on active service in both world wars. Image: manchesterhistory.net
Heligan Gardens http://www.heligan.com/
near Mevagissey in Cornwall, only about twenty miles from Newquay Zoo, is a garden restoration unlike many others I have visited, as it is haunted by the loss of the generation of garden and estate staff. They left their names under the penciled graffiti “Come not here to sleep nor slumber” in the “Thunderbox”, the primitive bothy toilet for estate staff. Many of these staff did not survive their service in the First World War in mind or body. The estate and garden without its usual labour force, as the Heligan staff today simply describe it, “quietly went to sleep” until the story was uncovered along with the overgrown gardens in the early 1990s. A beautiful little book tracing the staff named and signed in pencil on that wall and on the estate books has recently been published The Lost Gardens of Heligan – Heligan History: Lost Gardens, Lost Gardeners, being a Commemorative Album of Heligan through the Twentieth Century, featuring the Tremayne archive and the stories of staff who were lost in the Great War (published by Heligan Gardens Ltd and available on their online shop for about £3.95)
A small memorial at Newquay Zoo to the many zoo keepers, families and visitors worldwide who have been affected by wartime since 1914 (Image: World War Zoo gardens project, Newquay Zoo)
Zoos, aquariums and botanic gardens suffered similar losses of staff, as poignant as the effect on estates like Heligan or large organisations like the Great Western Railway (West country stations like Exeter still have the long list of the dead on their platform walls).
Few records survive for zoos, I have so far frustratingly found. I have been researching the wartime effects on a few typical British zoos operational in the First world war and what that generation learnt in preparation for surviving the Second world war (when our wartime dig for victory garden project at Newquay Zoo is set) for a forthcoming article in The Bartlett Society Journal www.zoohistory.co.uk The few records so far can stand in for a whole generation and zoos across the world.
On Armistice Day Thursday 11th and on Remembrance Sunday 14th, spare a thought for the keepers and zoo staff remembered on the ZSL war memorial at London Zoo. 12 names are listed from the staff out of 54 who served in the forces or munitions work in the First World War out of a staff of 150.
Poppies will be laid at the ZSL War Memorial, a Portland Stone memorial designed by architect John James Joass in 1919, based on a medieval Lanterne des Morts memorial to the dead at La Souterraine, Creuse Valley, France. The memorial was moved from the main gate area in 1952 after the 1939-45 names were added and is now near to the Three Island Pond area.
Reading the names means these men are not forgotten.
Read the names and spare a thought for these lost zoo staff from both wars.
Researching and reading a few of these background stories puts a more personal face on the scale of the losses, especially in the First World War. I shall feature a few more of these stories over the next year as information is discovered. The impatient reader can check the www.cwgc.org site. Many thanks to Kate Oliver at ZSL who transcribed or guessed the names on the very well polished brass name plates.
strong>November 2013 and March 2014: please see the updated information on ZSL London Zoo casualties from WW1 from this blog post which has been updated with new research.
ZSL London Zoo war memorial
The Zoological Society of London
In memory of employees who were killed on active service in the Great War 1914-1919
29.9.1915 Henry D Munro 4 Middlesex Regt ZSL Keeper (Transcribed details on this need to be checked)
18.03.1916 William Bodman (Buffs) 6th Btn, East Kent Regt, Private ZSL Helper. Age unknown. Commemorated on the Loos Memorial, no known grave.
10.07.1916 Albert A Dermott 13th Btn. Rifle Brigade, Rifleman ZSL Messenger, aged 22, killed on Somme, no known grave, listed on Thiepval Memorial
15.9.1916 Arthur G Whybrow 2547, 19 Bn. County of London Regt , ZSL Helper. Killed aged 23 during Somme battles, probably in the clearance of High Wood by 47 (London) Division, 15 September 1916. Individual grave at London cemetery, Longueval. Married.
05.10.1916 Gerald P Patterson 19 County of London Regt ZSL Helper (Transcribed Regiment details on this need to be checked)Probably Private G P Patterson of the 8th Battalion, Norfolk Regiment was killed on 5th October 1916, no age given, during the Somme fighting. Individual grave. Buried in Connaught Cemetery, Thiepval, Somme, France.
23.10.1916 William Dexter Kings Royal Rifles, Rifleman ZSL Keeper2nd Battalion, Rifle Brigade. Aged 31. Individual grave at Bienvillers Cemetery. Married.
09.04.1917 Robert Jones 9 Royal Fusiliers ZSL Gardener
Two possibilities exist for this casualty, firstly Private GS/60595 Robert Jones, 9th Battalion Royal Fusiliers was born in Islington or Highgate, Middlesex around 1881. He was married to Bertha Lewin of Abbots Ripton, Huntingdon around 1905 / 1906 in Camden / Highgate. He was formerly listed as 23358 6 Middlesex Regiment, having enlisted in Harringay and been resident in Highgate. On the 1901 census he is listed as a Gardener (not domestic) and in 1911 as a Nursery Gardener. On the CWGC website he is listed as the husband of Bertha Jones of 22 Caxton Street, Little Bowden, Market Harborough. This Robert Jones died of wounds on 7 April 1917 (two days different from the ZSL dates on the war memorial plaque) and is buried in Faubourg D’Amiens cemetery in Arras.
The second possibility is 472712, 1st / 12th Btn. London Regiment (The Rangers), aged 31. Individual grave, Gouy-en Artois Cemetery, killed first day of the Battle of Arras 1917. Listed on the 1911 census as a coal porter gas works, rather than a gardener. Hopefully the ZSL staff records will help to determine the correct Robert Jones. Both casualties deserve to be remembered.
21.4.1917 Henry George Jesse Peavot Honourable Artillery Co ZSL Librarian B Co. 1st Btn, aged 35. Killed during Battle of Arras period, No known grave, listed on Arras Memorial. Married.
23.9.1917 Albert Staniford Royal Field / Garrison Artillery ZSL Gardener 174234 216 Siege Battery. RGA Individual grave, Maroc British cemetery, Greany, France. Period of Third Battle of Ypres / Passchendaele, July to November 1917
03.10.1917 William Perkins Royal Garrison Artillery ZSL Keeper 115806, Bombardier, 233rd Siege Battery. Buried in individual plot, Belagin Battery Corner Cemetery, Belgium. Aged 39. Married.
29.11.1917 Alfred? L? Day 2 Rifle Brigade ZSL Helper
At first sight 19.1.1918 may apprar to be a wrong date transcribed on a well polished brass plate; the most likely casualty for this name is Alfred Lomas Day, S/20305 2nd Bn, Rifle Brigade, killed 29 November 1917 and buried in an individual grave (1841) Rethel French National Cemetery, Ardennes, France. However March 2014 research on ZSL staff record cards suggests that this casualty may be an R Day or Richard Day who died on 19 January 1918 as a German POW. Further research is required to find out if this man is the same or different from Alfred L Day.
10.9.1918 Charles William Dare County of London Regt Helper, 245116, London Regt (Royal Fusiliers), Vis-en-Artois memorial, no known grave. Killed during period of the “Adavnce to Victory” (August to November Armistice 1918)
“TILL THE RED WAR GLEAM LIKE A DIM RED ROSE / LOST IN THE GARDEN OF THE SONS OF TIME” memorial verse
Zoological Society of London
In memory of employees killed by enemy action during the war 1939-45
Regent’s Park
Davies. Henry Peris (Lieutenant RA) ZSL Clerk: Killed in action Far East 21.12.1941 164971, Royal Artillery, 5th Field Regt, died aged 27. Listed on the Singapore memorial.
Leney. William Walter Thomas ZSL Overseer: Killed by flying bomb 25.11.1944
Peachey. Leonard James (Sergeant RAF) ZSL Clerk: Killed in air crash Lincs 18.12.1940
Wells. Albert Henry (Gunner RA) ZSL Keeper: Killed in action, Burma 25.01.1945 Gunner 1755068, Royal Artillery, 70 H.A.A Regiment
Whipsnade Park
Adams. Percy Murray (Gunner RA) ZSL Keeper: Died in Japan POW 28.07.1943 Gunner 922398, Royal Artillery, 148 (Bedfordhsire Yeomanry) Field Regt, died aged 26.
Percy Adams, ZSL Whipsnade keeper who died as a Japanese POW is buried here at THANBYUZAYAT WAR CEMETERY, Image: http://www.cwgc.org
Checking with the excellent Commonwealth War Graves Commission records site http://www.cwgc.org under ‘search for a casualty’ shows that Albert Henry Wells is buried in the Taukkyan War Cemetery in Myanmar (Burma). Percy Adams in Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery, Myanmar / Thai border. The CWGC website notes of this cemetery: “The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the large Japanese army in Burma. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery was created [postwar] by the Army Graves Service who transferred to it all graves along the northern section of the railway, between Moulmein and Nieke.”
ZSL Clerk Leonard Peachey, RAF Volunteer Reserve, died aged 32 as Sergeant Wireless Operator / Air Gunner in an air training crash serving with 22 Squadron in Lincolnshire at RAF North Coates / Cotes. He is buried in North Cotes (St. Nicholas) Churchyard, Lincs alongside what are presumably his crew from 22 Squadron, killed on the same day: Sergeant Pilot Dennis George How RAFVR (aged 23) and Sergeant Observer Paul Victor Renai (aged 22, from Wellington, New Zealand) and Sergeant Wireless Operator / W.E. Mechanic Ralph Gerald Hart (22). 22 Squadron brought the Bristol Beaufort into operational service http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/collections/aircraft/bristol-beaufort.cfm; receiving the first aircraft in November 1939 and, after an intense work up at North Coates in Lincolnshire, the Squadron resumed operations in April 1940, beginning with mine-laying sorties. It moved to RAF Thorney Island where torpedo operations were resumed in August. In order to cover a wider area of sea the Squadron sent out detachments, to RAF Abbotsinch then to St Eval, Newquay in Cornwall being the most regular posting. 22 Squadron was re-formed at Thorney Island in 1955 as a Search and Rescue Helicopter Squadron. Information from http://www.22squadronassociation.org.uk/Hist1546.html
Leonard Peachey, ZSL Clerk is buried among these RAF graves at North Coates (St Nicholas) Churchyard, Lincs. Image: cwgc.org
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. Several flying bombs are recorded as having fallen around the London Zoo area, close neighbour of RAF Regent’s Park.
Kate Oliver of ZSL London Zoo’s current education team kindly transcribed the well polished names. She thinks that Helpers were young staff who had not attained keeper rank, something I will be following up in researching their backgrounds through the census, National Archives, London Zoo archive and National Archives. .
I am interested in hearing from anyone who has further information about these men or of other wartime zoo, aquarium or botanic garden related gravestones or rolls of honour. I can be contacted at Newquay Zoo.
Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, Manchester, war memorial stories
Belle Vue’s war memorial, Gorton Cemetery, Manchester on its unveiling 1926. Image: manchesterhistory.net
The only other well documented zoo one is for Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, Manchester at Gorton cemetery in Manchester, now sadly much vandalized. Much has been written about this early zoo and leisure gardens collection, which survived from the 1830s to 1977/8.
Spare a thought for the men listed on the monument, and their families. To read more of their stories, Stephen and Susan Cocks have follwed up information in the book The Belle Vue Monument (or Memorial)- with information on the cwgc.org website and others for the blog entry at http://blog.guidedbattlefieldtours.co.uk/2010/01/15/hello-world
More about the memorial, press articles from its dedication in 1926 and its current vandalized state can be found at http://manchesterhistory.net/bellevue/warmemorial.html and more from Stephen Cocks at http://blog.guidedbattlefieldtours.co.uk/2010/02/04/the-belle-vue-memorial-the-story-of-the-memorial
Belle Vue Zoological Gardens staff killed on active service 1915-1918
1915 deaths
Private Henry Mulroy, 12th Battalion. Manchester Regiment, killed Ypres, 16 August 1915. Buried Ridge Wood Military cemetery.
Private Frederick Lester Reid, 1st Battalion, Loyal North Lancs Regt, died aged 31, 25 September 1915, battle of Loos, no known grave, listed Loos Memorial. Married.
1916 deaths
Private William Morrey, died 27 June, 1916, Manchester Regiment / 1st Battalion, Special Brigade, Royal Engineers (probably a gas unit), buried Beauval cemetery, France. (Several William Morreys from the Cheshire, Lancashire and Manchester area are listed on the cwgc.org site, obviously a local name).
Private Alfred Routledge, 11th Battalion, Manchester Regiment, killed on The Somme, aged 23, 26 September 1916. Married. Listed on the Thiepval memorial, no known grave.
Routledge is one of the many “Missing of the Somme” (in Geoff Dyer’s words), killed in the final days of taking Thiepval village, one of the original objectives of the 1st July 1916, the first disastreous day of the Battle of The Somme two months earlier.
1917 deaths
Second Lieutenant James Leonard Jennison, 15th, Battalion West Yorks Regt (Leeds Pals) killed Arras, 3 May 1917 – no known grave, listed Arras Memorial. Son of James, one of the two Jennison brothers who owned Belle Vue zoo. His father James died later that year, possibly as a result of this loss. His cousin Norman, son of Angelo Jennison, also died on active service.
Private Ralph William Stamp, 18th battalion, Manchester Regiment, died aged 23, 23 April 1917, no known grave, listed on the Arras memorial, the same as J L Jennison.
Sergeant John E Oliver, 21st Battalion, Manchester Regiment, killed 24 October 1917, Passchendaele battles, no known grave, listed Tyne Cot memorial. Married.
Stoker First Class T J Tumbs, aged 40, killed HMS Drake, 2 October, 1917, convoy duty off coast of Ireland in U79 U-boat torpedo attack.
Private Harold? Heathcote, 5th Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment died in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), 19 October 1917, buried Baghdad war cemetery.
1918 deaths
Sergeant J Fuller, Devonshire Regiment / Pioneer Corps, died 14 April 1918. Buried Amiens, France. Married
Private James G Craythorne, 1/6 Manchester Regiment, killed 20 October 1918 ironically in the fighting for Belle Vue Farm, buried at Belle Vue (Farm) Cemetery, France. (Three or four generations of the Craythorne family worked as small mammal and reptile keepers at Belle Vue, including James Craythorne who follwed his own father into zoo work, was employed aged 12 from the 1880s to retirement in 1944, replaced then by his son Albert!
Private Sidney Turner, Welsh Regiment, died aged 18, Welsh Regiment, buried in Gorton Cemetery (site of the Belle Vue Zoo war memorial). Several others who died after the war are also individually buried here.
Captain Norman L Jennison, MC (Military Cross) , 6th Manchester Regt (territorials), died of flu, Genoa, Italy 30 October 1918 serving with a trench mortar battery. Son of Angelo, one of the two Jennison brothers who owned Belle Vue zoo. His cousin James Leonard also died on active service.
Belle Vue Zoological Gardens staff died from the effect of war after 1918.
Zoo owner Angelo Jennison unveiling in 1926 the Belle Vue memorial in Gorton Cemetery to his son, nephew and zoo staff lost in the First World War. Image: manchesterhistory.net
This unusual addition gives a little glimpse of what must have happened to many zoo, aquarium and botanic garden staff who never recovered from the effects of active service in wartime.
Private WM Wheatcroft, 3rd Battalion, Kings Liverpool Regiment, died aged 28, 10 July 1919, buried in Gorton cemetery.
Sergeant Robert Hawthorne, died 24 June 1922, buried in Gorton cemetery.
Rifleman / Lance Corporal William Croasdale, Belle Vue’s baker, served Army Service Corps (bakery) and Kings Royal Rifle Corps, served overseas 1915 to 1919, aged 32, died 1922, (possibly Stephen Cocks suggests in a mental hospital, Prestwich but others have disputed this).
Private Joseph Cummings, died 9 May 1926.
First Class PO Matthew James Walton DSM, fought Battle of the Falklands naval action, 1914, died 1926.
Private Bernard A Hastain (name almost unreadable) Rifle Brigade, formerly a scene painter at Drury Lane and Belle Vue for their Firework spectaculars, died of effects probably of gas, 1933.
Belle Vue Zoo’s now vandalised war memorial – luckily the names, although hard to read, are inscribed in stone as the brass statue has been stolen. Image: manchesterhistory.net
Tracing service men who died after service is more difficult, not registered on the CWGC site and one for future research in the National Archives medal and pensions records (the ‘burnt documents’) if they have survived.
There are sadly many more names to add to these wartime casualty lists from zoos, botanic gardens and aquariums as our World War Zoo gardens research project continues. We would be interested to hear of any more names or memorials you know of.
So buy a poppy (there’s a box in the Newquay Zoo office if you’re visiting) and spare a thought for these men and their families on Remembrance Sunday, and also for the many people not listed who were affected by their war service, men and women not just from Britain but all over the world.
Afternoon autumn light on the poppies, plants and sandbags of the wartime zoo keeper’s garden at Newquay Zoo
And then enjoy the noisy peace of the zoo gardens or wherever you find yourself …
Which wartime pill box has the nicest view in Britain? Is it the one nestling amongst the coastal gardens on St Michael's Mount in Cornwall?
Since the anniversary of Eagle Day (Adlertag on 13 August 1940), you cannot fail to have noticed some of the commemoration and coverage of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz on British cities 70 years ago. The 15th of September, known as Battle of Britain Day, saw a corresponding rise in readership of our blog, 80 readers on that day alone has taken us well past 8000 + readers. By the 26th October we will have reached 10,000 readers plus, since we started writing about our wartime garden project blog just over a year ago.
Kite men soaring over wartime pill boxes, above the beach and cafe, Sennen Cove near Lands End, Cornwall, September 2010. One pill box is easy to spot on the cliff top. Can you see the other 'killer' one tucked away further down the cliff? (World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo).
So forgive me, regular readers. It is over 6 weeks since my last confession or blog on the World War zoo garden project at Newquay Zoo. We’ve another bumper blog edition for you. However we know you will have been kept busy in the garden or watching the coverage of the many interesting wartime anniversaries in September and November.
There have been parades, newspaper supplements and interviews, along with the BBC Blitz and Battle of Britain seasons www.bbc.co.uk/blitz including the documentary Spitfire Women (about the Air Transport Auxiliary) and a very moving dramatization of Geoff Wellum’s First Light, his coming of age Spitfire memoir. I didn’t realize that Mr. Wellum lives in the local area, pictured in the newspapers with Mullion Cove and parts of Cornwall in the background. I’ve been privileged to meet a few Spitfire pilots in the past, including my former school headmaster D.G.S. Akers, now long retired. We’ve also had the Battle of Britain memorial flight pass over the zoo during penguin feeding time (just after the Eclipse in 1999, I think). The penguins were quite fascinated by these graceful ladies passing low overhead! I’ve also chatted this month over the wartime garden fence a member of the Spitfire Society, who was visiting the zoo. He was interested in the schools workshops and pack we are preparing for 2011/12; the Spitfire Society are looking forward to working with schools and have some sponsorship from Airfix http://www.airfix.com (Recent ads in the BBC History magazine show that you too can own and fly the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight in miniature, in plastic, on string above your head at home – with proceeds to forces charities, to boot!)
Parts of my leave from the wartime garden and Newquay Zoo took me around the West and South Coast of Cornwall. Having been working on the wartime garden project for almost two years now, it is hard to escape little reminders of wartime life, even on family days out. Knowing a little more now how real the fear or threat of invasion was in 1940, you catch glimpses of this fear on your travels. A pill box at St. Michael’s Mount, nestling at the base of this amazing National Trust castle, camouflaged amongst the rocks. A seaside beach at Sennen or Loe Bar or Dawlish still watched over by its little wartime concrete castle. We’ll include in our next few blogs a few more local photographs of the subtle traces or ‘ghostmarks’ of wartime (as Kenneth Helphand calls them in Defiant Gardens).
It has become noticeably Autumn in the wartime garden. Newquay Zoo has been busy with the last of the season holiday makers, mixed in with the arrival of lots of new faces amongst students to study zoology, conservation and animal care from Cornwall College Newquay www.cornwall.ac.uk/newquay and Treviglas Community College.
A late Indian Summer in late September and early October looked promising for the last of the growing season. Like many zoo and tourism business staff, we take our well-earned ‘summer break’ as soon as the school holidays are over. We have all mostly been lucky with the weather, but the garden has suffered in the last few weeks from frost and wet. Warm September and October days with cloudless skies come with a cost.
October frost finished the last of our tomatoes, so close to ripening. World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo
The beautiful clear sunny days have been paid for alas with cold, clear, starry nights. That fresh, sharp morning chill (not unpleasant) of the first Autumn weeks of the school term has come at a price. Many of the wartime gardening books acknowledge that growing tomatoes outside in Britain without a greenhouse is always a gamble. We lost to frost again this year!
Gnome guard (LDV) watching over late strawberry flowers at Newquay Zoo's World War Zoo Wartime garden
Our tomatoes which had showed signs of blight and leaf blotching from some early October rain showers have been finished off by mild frost damage just as they were ripening in the last few days before half term and the strangeness of Halloween preparations. Sunday 24th October saw these tomatoes sadly dug up and added to the compost heap behind the Lion House. Many were annoyingly close to ripening. If this was wartime, this would be a serious setback. Let’s hope our late strawberries don’t go the same way!
Ripening Strawberries on their bed of straw, World War Zoo gardens project, Newquay Zoo.
Our ‘straw-berries’ are bedded down on handfuls of straw to protect them. Straw has also been used for a slightly more comic or sinister purpose around the zoo over half term. We didn’t grow pumpkins or gourds this year as we don’t have the space in our wartime plot. Next year we might enter a Land girl with pumpkin head into the zoo’s scarecrow festival competition this half term , but this year we’re too busy seed collecting and planting! There are some great scarecrow examples from different zoo sections to look out for and vote for, if you’re visiting Newquay Zoo over the Halloween half term. There are even some wartime animal ghost stories to fing on our halloween trail.
Alternatively, pop in to the National Trust’s Trengwainton Gardens near Penzance to see their scarecrow festival in their beautifully restored working kitchen gardens. They have a Land girl and Hitler scarecrow on their “dig for victory” garden plot on the Trengwainton community allotments, run by Paul Bonnington. We look forward to working with Trengwainton and others on the World War Zoo project in future.
My last day before leave was spent writing my last blog entry, tidying and watering the wartime garden plot and sowing green manure. I sowed some of the last crops of the season to give us winter and Spring veg, wartime varieties of Spring lettuce and cabbage such as Durham, Flower of Spring and Offenham Early . (The onions are all that is left to plant out now).
Green manure crop, World War Zoo garden, Newquay Zoo, Autumn 2010
On my return from pottering around Cornwall for two weeks with the family, the organised weeds of our green manure mix (clover, mustard and others) were well established as ground cover and weed suppressant. Within another month by mid November, we shall be able to dig this crop into the ground to rot down throughout the month of December. This should boost our fairly poor slaty, stony clay zoo soil ready for fresh planting in the New Year. One of my new students misread the plant label as “Green manure crap” instead of “crop”. In a strange way, he’s not far wrong in what the zoo soil needs. In addition to the green manure, we do get a fair soil boost from our zoo compost heaps, with some animal bedding and hoofstock dung, leaves, grass and plant clippings of our compost heaps. There’s a good quick chirpy little video clip with Chris Collins (the Blue Peter gardener) about green manure on the BBC Dig In Campaign website: http://bbc.co.uk/digin Only days after pulling out the last of the pea and broad bean haulm (stems) did I read wartime Smallholder magazine advice about digging the steams and roots back in to rot down!
Our BBC Dig In carrots are topping out nicely, protected from carrot root fly by a thick grassy swathe of chives. The BBC Dig In Dwarf French beans didn’t look too good once the Black Swan had explored them but some seed pods might still be saved for seed next year. Our Australian Black Swan on its free-ranging strolls around the zoo is attracted to the garden’s location at the Lion House lawn area by the windfall crab apples from nearby trees. Black Swans can now be added to our list of unusual garden pests, alongside peacocks.
Leek seeds and bees, August 2010, World War Zoo gardens Newquay Zoo
Seed saving, a wartime necessity, has seen a good crop of Broad Beans drying out alongside paper envelopes of sunflower seeds and a small crop of Runner Beans from a trip to Heligan, bought from their surplus heritage veg produce for sale. About a dozen strange Afro-haircut headed leek seed heads are drying slowly on their plants, the last of 2009’s leeks from some spare seedlings from Tregew farm shop near Flushing, Falmouth. Wartime gardening books have some timely advice on seed saving, as do the Real Seed Company. It’s a subject surprisingly not seen or covered much of late in gardening magazines, despite recession thrift and Alys Fowler’s Thrifty Garden.
Thrift and improvisation were the watchword of many a wartime gardener and wartime zoo keeper. The hard frost and snow earlier this year has bought on a bumper crop of acorns from the oaks overshadowing my home garden and kind neighbours leave basketfuls on my doorstep. Before you send anymore, I now have a couple of sacks full, enough for autumn and winter. One young lad kindly send us an envelope full of acorns to say thank you for his Junior Keeper day.
Acorns provide useful enrichment for some foraging animals such as our rare Philippine Warty Pigs, but are not the widespread food for all that they once proved in wartime. From providing German ersatz acorn coffee to feeding many people during the Dutch hunger winter of 1944, acorns also proved helpful to bridge the animal foodstuff gap early on in British wartime zoos. Reminiscent of the scrap drives for iron railings and Aluminium saucepans for Spitfires by Lord Beaverbrook, the secretary of ZSL London Zoo Julian Huxley put out a broadcast appeal for acorns in Autumn 1939:
“Many children in the country have done their part to help feed the Zoo animals by collecting acorns. Acorns are an excellent feed for agoutis, squirrels, monkeys, deer, and even pheasants like them. Beech mast, so often left to waste on the ground in beechy counties like Bucks, also makes a fine food and it is surprising how helpful such emergency rations have proved.”
Quoted from The Zoos in War article by Margaret Shaw, Animal and Zoo magazine, November 1939 (copy in Newquay Zoo archive).
Julian Huxley reported the public response a month later in the News from the Zoos section of the December 1939 issue of Animal and Zoo magazine:
Acorns for the Camels – December 1939
“Acorns have been pouring into the London Zoo at a rate of a ton a week ever since a broadcast appeal was made for them. They arrive in sacks, parcels, shopping bags and even the canvas sacks used by banks to store coins. One of the overseers told me that most animals have the sense to know when they’ve had enough acorns. For, of course, acorns are only a supplementary diet, and these sent in to the Zoo are being saved to offer the animals as a little luxury to supplement the rather restricted diet of wartime.”
“The elder of the two Bactrian camels, George, loved his treat of acorns and munches them up with great gusto. Not so Wally. Wally was born at Whipsnade and is quite a youngster compared to his companion. He simply refuses to look at them. In the Rodent House many of the burrowing animals are busy hiding them away in the straw. Every one has enjoyed helping the Zoo by gathering these acorns. I heard an amusing story from a member of the Zoo’s staff whose mother has been evacuated to Devonshire, where she is staying on a farm. She wrote a plaintive letter with her consignment, saying that the competition was so great among the farm animals and herself that she had to stay at the window waiting for a breeze to dislodge a single acorn. Then there was the concerted rush of twenty pigs, ten cows and herself to pick up the fallen nut.” (December 1939)
A fine hat on display in our Zoo News 'World War Zoo' article on display at the wartime garden, Newquay Zoo.
Speaking of zoo and animal magazines, the World War Zoo project features in a double page article with photos in Zoo News, the thrice-yearly members’ magazine of Living Coasts, Newquay and Paignton zoos (all part of the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust). Newquay Zoo members have already popped in to laugh about my ‘daft hat’. (Thanks). Hats and headgear are one of the few areas of ‘un-uniform’ that zoo staff are usually allowed. However, this was not always the rule. Fellow local zoo historian and Bartlett Society member Neil Thomas-Childs in some of his kind library searches for the World War Zoo project told me as an aside that London Zoo created their famous ZSL cap badge as the standard badge for its famous peaked caps directly after the First World War. This was as a result of keepers returning from the forces doggedly wearing their old regimental cap badges. This strange peace dividend went on, according to ex London Zoo staff at Newquay Zoo, right up to the late 1980s when the peaked cap were phased out. One day maybe our peaked keeper caps will return … and the lion shall lie down with the lamb.
For our next wartime garden blog article in early November, we’ll be returning to London Zoo amongst others, in time for Armistice and Remembrance Sunday. We will be observing the two minute’s silence and holding a small display of our project’s wartime gardening and home front memorabilia at Newquay Zoo on Remembrance Sunday, the 14th November 2010. Part of the wartime garden’s role is as a living memorial to the wartime generation, along with a couple of stories from the few war memorials to zoo staff we have so far discovered. The scale of the ‘sacrifice’ is still difficult to comprehend.
War memorials and poppies aside, we have in our November blog a couple more examples of the wartime “time safari” around your neighbourhood, which may be of interest to primary and history teachers. (A similar “Victorian time safari” is sometimes featured on our sister blog, http://darwin200stampzoo.wordpress.com). We also hope to have some more cheerful news, fingers crossed, from the BIAZA zoo awards at Paignton Zoo in early November of whether the World War Zoo gardens project has received an award commendation in its first year.
It’s poppy time again (see blogroll links for the Royal British Legion website). Zoo staff and the wartime garden will be proudly wearing their poppies, although keepers don’t wear them whilst working as pins, poppies and grasping animal paws don’t mix.
Finally, the BBC’s landmark Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects with the British Museum has come to an end this week with object No. 100: a solar mobile phone and lamp charger, not unlike Newquay Zoo’s bank of solar water heating and electricity generating panels. You can find out about our World War Zoo gardens project offerings to the BBC’s online museum (a handmade wooden spitfire toy and wooden handmade sliding puzzle) in the Cornwall, 1940s or wartime section (see our blogroll links). Enough objects to keep you busy browsing until our next blog offering.
We will at Newquay Zoo, like many in workplaces across Britain and the Commonwealth, stop work again at 11 o’clock, Wednesday the 11th November 2009 to remember the moment when the First World War came to an end.
Life returned to not quite the same for many zoo keepers and their families after the war, only for the same upheaval, disruption and loss of life to happen all over again tragically in 1939 on much wider scale. Then came the austerity of the postwar world where building materials and food resources were in short supply. Many people were hungry or ‘displaced’ (DP) and housed in enclosures in empty zoo gardens across Europe, movingly depicted in photographs in the Imperial War Museum image collection (accessible via their website).
‘Scratch’ vegetable gardens sprang up on bomb sites and DP camps all over Europe. Similar ones are illustrated in Kenneth Helphand’s inspiring and moving book Defiant Gardens, recently published. Food became precious and in some cases, more rationed post-war as it had to be shared out across the whole of Europe against the challenging climate background of bitter winters. In a small way, our experience of nursing tiny seeds through to lanky Cabbage shoots, watching out for frost and on to the beautiful, rain-bejewelled, leafy and slug-threatened whorls of leaves that they now are in our wartime garden makes you appreciate food a little bit more.
Many of our colleagues in European zoos will be thinking about another momentous event whose anniversary falls this week, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the massive changes across Eastern Europe 20 years ago in 1989. (Can it really be already 20 years ago?) This opened up many opportunities to zoo staff in Eastern Europe of freedom to travel and share experiences but came at the cost of collapsing economies affecting the resources of the state and national zoos.
Zoo keeping is, by its nature, a very generous international community with the shared global role of protecting endangered animals, their habitats and the wider environment. We look forward to researching or hearing more stories from our colleagues in Eastern Europe, including ex-Newquay zoo staff Steve Pilcher working at Kiev in the Ukraine, where local people hid the zoo animals in their homes during wartime to keep them safe. Incredible stories also include the Polish zoo staff who hid Jewish refugees in the zoo set out in Diane Ackerman’s The ZooKeeper’s Wife, using a surviving diary. A diary well worth reading.
I have always been impressed and humbled at European zoo conferences (including in the former East Germany) when speaking to colleagues from the Eastern European zoos that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. We spaek of not having much financial resources etc in British zoos, but in comparison how much has been achieved with little or no resources, apart from lots of volunteers and community support along with imagination and skilled knowledge from themselves and supportive zoos overseas.
Even a little money regularly over time and some excellent sharing and training can sometimes make a big difference for animals, people and habitats. You can see this inaction with the civets and pangolin conservation success of the Small Carnivore Project (see www.newquayzoo.org.uk/conservation) in Vietnam, another area famously ravaged by conflict in recent times.
And now zoos working together and supporting each other around the world, even remotely by e-mail and internet, face an even wider challenge of climate change, habitat loss and resource shortages on a global scale.
Maybe our tiny wartime zookeepers’ vegetable garden will be a small part in a ‘grow your own’, self-sufficient, local food miles and zoo poo compost recycling movement to grow fresh animal food just like our wartime colleagues did.
Peacocks are thieving carrots out of the ground,along with iceberg lettuce – luckily some of these can be replanted and we are hoping the first frosts here hold off so our salad lasts longer into the winter.
So at 11 a.m., I shall be quietly standing at the wartime garden, looking at our poppy cross and remembering the cost of food and freedom …
Remembrance in the wartime garden - remembering zoo staff, zoo families and other animalsPoppy cross of remembrance at the zoo keepers' wartime garden, Newquay Zoo
Our World War Zoo project is a practical living memorial, almost history that you can eat in the form of a wartime “dig for victory garden” being recreated at Newquay Zoo in Cornwall.
In my time as zoo staff, I have seen Kosovo, Kabul, Baghdad and other Middle East Zoos affected by conflict.
If you seek another more poignant memorial, visit London Zoo, possibly the world’s most famous but not oldest zoo. Tucked away near the Lion houses and modern zoo buildings is a simple stone cross with well polished brass plaques, the writing almost obliterated in places.
Here are listed simplay and respectfully the names of those servants, ‘helpers’ and keepers of London Zoo and Whipsnade who died on active service. Alan Alder our Primate keeper at Newquay Zoo, who worked at London Zoo, told me that every year a gathering of keepers lays a wreath of poppies on the stone steps and stands quiet during the two minutes silence, as do keepers in zoos all over Britain, remembering this extraordinary time amid the noise of animals calling throughout the park. A strange and atmospheric two minutes of (not very) silence …
It’s blowing a gale and raining here, the garden is appropriately very, very muddy.
World War Zoo
World War Zoo is about looking back and looking forward, learning from the past to prepare for our future. The project developed from a chance discovery that zoos were closed in the early weeks of World War Two, and even though they were re-opened and supported as a way to boost moral, they struggled throughout. This was a time when food was short, and animals didn’t get ration books. Staffing was low with keepers being called up to fight, and repairs were difficult.
A bucket full of weeding, 'waste not, want not' signage from a wartime children's book and Spinach beet from the Newquay Zoo wartime zoo keepers' garden.
The wartime Squander Bug is back in Britain with a vengeance!
The change in hours with Daylight Saving Time (another hangover from wartime) meant I was awake for the farming news on the radio this morning . WRAP the food wastage and recycling thinktank reckoned that over five million potatoes are thrown in our household bins each day, with a similar number of tomatoes and 1 to 2 million apples a day (which would obviously keep away lots of doctors). You can find out more on their website http://www.wrap.org.uk/ and and their ad campaign Love Food Hate Waste http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/.
This is obviously one very large wasted compost heap going into landfill! I wonder what wartime zoo keepers and families on rations for themselves and animals would have thought of this? What would Potato Pete (as sung by a young Betty Driver, later Betty Turpin of Coronation Street fame) have said?
The facts and figures of annual UK household food waste make alarming reading by wartime standards http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/The_Food_We_Waste_v2__2_.dd97c529.5635.pdf
Perhaps if we had to grow more of our own vegetables we might treat them with more value?
Weeding out grass from amongst the late autumn salad in the zoo veg patch over the weekend (my least favourite job) brought this home. Later on in the day came the news reports of possibly the last Normandy Veterans commemoration service at Westminster Abbey yesterday. Many of these D-Day veterans, now in their eighties and nineties, left England for France from beaches along the West Country locally at Trebah Gardens, where a memorail now stands to them. GI troops from the USA encamped at our sister zoo in Paignton (and ate the peacocks) or trained disastrously around Paignton Zoo’s now peaceful nature reserve at Slapton Sands and Ley (as mentioned in our earlier blogs with its own poignant Sherman tank memorial). One of these Normandy veterans Peter Dwyer, an old friend of the zoo and contributor of nature notes to the Zoo Newsletter Paw Prints in the past, has his own happier occasion plaque on a bench in the zoo celebrating his 80th birthday here a few years back.
Today the Poppy appeal is launched locally by the Royal British Legion and we will plan to plant poppies (alongside potatoes!) in next year’s wartime garden. Poppies will be there not for the eating nor the colour but to help us remember. To happily remember men like Peter Dwyer and sadly remember thousands of others, zoo staff included, who did not return or recover and who could not forget. Not forgotten …
World War Zoo
World War Zoo is about looking back and looking forward, learning from the past to prepare for our future. The project developed from a chance discovery that zoos were closed in the early weeks of World War Two, and even though they were re-opened and supported as a way to boost morale, they struggled throughout. This was a time when food was short, and animals didn’t get ration books. Staffing was low with keepers being called up to fight, and repairs were difficult.
‘‘Our Wartime Garden project reflects the Dig for Victory gardens that sprang up in unlikely places all over the country, including zoos. It will also act as a living memorial to the bravery of many ordinary men, women and children. Newquay Zoo already recycles, composts and think about food miles when sourcing food for the café, and now the Victory Garden will demonstrate how keepers would grow food for the animals.’’ Staff at the zoo are hoping for a good crop of vegetables before the weather turns!
To bring the period alive for families and schools visiting the zoo, staff members have been collecting wartime memorabilia and evocative items from everyday life of keepers, families, evacuated children and zoo visitors.
Find out all the latest news about Newquay Zoo plus videos and much more.
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