I'm sure that many people will have happy memories of Plymouth Zoo. I remember that we first went there when I was about 9 years old in the late 1960s. A pelican called Percy followed us all the way around the zoo, it was almost like he was giving us a guided tour! Over the years, I visited the zoo with my parents, my brother and friends from school.
It was a shilling to get in and there were many animals including chimpanzees, polar bears, seals, camels, giraffes and lions. The chimps were always my favourite but were obviously quite bored in their relatively small cage. The chimp cage was at the beginning of the zoo and if any smoker discarded a lit cigarette in their direction, one of them would pick it up and start smoking it. Unruly kids would chuck gravel at the chimps and the chimps would throw it back. I remember one school trip where the elephant took our teacher's umbrella!
There's a great movie on the Pathe News website showing the zoo in the 1960s and all the animals look very happy. I know that the keepers were very interested in their welfare and got quite attached to the animals. When you're a kid, a zoo seems a wondrous place but when you're older and with hindsight, it seems cruel keeping them all cooped up in cages. I used to watch the polar bears pacing up and down, doing repetitive movements and obviously being driven crazy by being locked up. Even as a naive kid in the 1960s, I felt sorry for them.
I remember the sweet popcorn that was sold at the cafe to feed the animals. All the kids always ended up eating it themselves although I'm sure it wouldn't have done the animals much good anyway. I remember once that there was a giraffe which was just about to swallow am empty popcorn packet. Luckily, the keeper managed to get it off him before he choked!
The cafe sold allsorts of souvenirs such as pendants, guide books, badges (I've still got mine) and my favourite, chimpanzee masks! I once wore a chimp mask all the way home on the bus and nobody said a word! As we got home, our next door neighbour was moving out and he shook my hand and said, 'Bye, Derek!' I still had the chimp mask on. That year, the mask ended up on our guy on Guy Fawkes night and ended up on the street's bonfire (in the days when you could build bonfires!).
The zoo also had a children's area with guinea pigs and rabbits and a huge tortoise which I believe was a gift from the Navy in the early 1960s. There were rides for smaller kids on ponies and mechanical giraffes.
The zoo closed on Sunday January 8th 1978 and was later converted into a skateboard park. Now, it's hard to work out where it once stood but probably forms part of Plymouth Argyle's ground.
Like many Plymothians, I had some great times at Plymouth Zoo in the 1960s and 1970s but today I'd be reluctant to visit any zoo as it now seems wrong, to me, to coop animals up in small, unnatural environments. It was all part of my childhood though and I've very fond memories of it.
