Manor House Wild Animal Park

Manor House Wild Animal Park
01-12-2007

Interesting story regarding Manor House Wild Animal Park in Wales.
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/...2423/Celebrity star buys Welsh animal park


EVICTED I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here contestant Anna Ryder Richardson is set to swiftly reunite herself with wildlife after buying her own West Wales zoo.

The Swansea-born TV designer, who made her name alongside Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen on Changing Rooms, has bought the £1m Manor House Wild Animal Park at St Florence, near Tenby, which keeps, among other things, zebra, camel and American bison.

The 45-acre zoo is just a few miles from the home of fellow I’m a Celebrity contestant Cerys Matthews, with whom the designer bonded during her 16 days in the Australian jungle.

The 43-year-old mother-of two first went to Manor House in Pembrokeshire eight months ago and will pick up the keys over the next few weeks ready for a relaunch for thousands of visitors at Easter.

The park is centred on an 18th century manor house and also houses antelope, reindeer, tapir and llamas.

Park owner Jo Williams said, “Anna just loves it here. She is very excited about taking it over and looking after the animals.

“Her two little children had a great time here and she decided to buy it from us.

“She did very well in the Australian jungle so she will feel very much at home here in our zoo.

“Apparently it was always a dream of hers to have her own zoo. She was talking to a friend of mine at a safari park who mentioned that I might be retiring.

“She came down and fell in love with the place. Her two children are delightful and I know they will love it here.”

Ryder Richardson was the sixth person to be voted off the show on Monday, losing out to ex-pop star Jason ‘J’ Brown.

During the prime time ITV programme, which is hosted by Ant and Dec, she conquered her fear of heights on several occasions and spent 12 hours locked in a dungeon with 200 rats.

When she emerged she immediately named Matthews and former EastEnders star Marc Bannerman as her favourite co-contestants.

She became something of an agony aunt to the couple, giving Bannerman advice about his then girlfriend Sarah Matravers and going as far as planning the couple’s “wedding” with Christopher Biggins hours before being voted off.

Ryder Richardson now lives in Glasgow with her husband Colin MacDougall and children Bibi Belle, five, and Dixie Dot, four, but reportedly plans to spend much of the summer helping to run the zoo.

01-12-2007

I heard somewhere that she was buying a zoo. Is It Me Or does anone else think Wales lacks good zoos. Manor House and Welsh Mountain are the onl proper ones we have.

01-12-2007

Don`t forget Folly Farm which just happens to be on Manor House door step,at present i would visit Folly over Manor any day,but the potential of Manor is i believe much the far greater but will need alot of work to reach it.

01-12-2007

That's still onl 3 though.

03-12-2007

waht species?

Welsh zoos
05-12-2007

There is a small zoo at borth in wales called the animalarium, has anyone visited? Also the Primate sanctuary in the swansea valley is another welsh collection, allthough not so much a zoo.

Visit to manor House Wildlife Park
05-07-2008

I visited MHWP yesterday . The old web site is still up and said it was open and the road signs deliver you to the car park which is locked . All signs at the entrance have been removed and there is nothing on the gate to explain what is happening .

I managed to speak to a helpful person inside who was annoyed that the website was still running . I was told they were hoping to re-open on 19th July and that I was welcome to come in via the trade gate and look around .

There was a lot of activity going on with a large new open-top enclosure being constructed and it looked as if a lot of work had been done on the Manor House and next door smaller house .

The single siamang was still present but many of the enclosures in the walled gardens were empty - I saw ring-tailed lemurs , raccoon , squirrel monkey , cockatoos and a macaw , kookaburras and a few other birds . Two red ruffed lemurs were in the cage outside . The encounter barn was empty . Five flamingos were still in the sunken pool - this would make a superb large aviary . The scimitar oryx paddock had been refenced incorporating the nextdoor wooded area , as well as 4 oryx inc. a calf there were a couple of llama and the small herd of sika deer . The 2 zebra were no longer with the bison but in a separate paddock , in others a pair of bactrian camel , a single S. American tapir with llamas , the bison herd numbered about 10 inc. a calf also 2 emu . The range of paddocks by the entrance had been knocked into 1 and housed wallabies and looked as if it was being prepared as a walk-through .

No sign of amongst others the marsh mongoose , brown capuchins , reindeer , birds of prey .

I was also told that next year they planned to have tigers , rhino and giraffe .

05-07-2008

everybody's buying up rundown zoos and revamping them(well two people at least...)

I hope that transforming this 'traditional' wildlife park into an up-to- date attraction doesn't drain their resources too heavily before they start to recoup some money from visitors-from what you say at the end it seems they have ambitious plans for moving into higher profile species in the future(considerably more cost!)

Tenby is quite a good location for a wildlife/zoo-park but the holiday season is still short and I wonder how they will manage during the rest of the year regarding sufficient visitors? (Any number of small zoos have opened and closed again in similar locations e.g. Devon for that reason)

05-07-2008

It needed to do something because on my last visit i was not very impressed with the place,nice to hear a bit of forward planning for new species to the park,but would suggest they try walking before they try running keeping animals like Rhino and Tiger.

05-07-2008

I would suggest that one reason the wildlife park was stagnating COULD be because of difficulties attracting enough visitors through the year leading to insufficient funds for development.

The new owner can at least inject a load of cash and put it onto a better footing now but I'll be interested to see the longterm outcome of this bold venture. The same goes for the newly revamped Dartmoor Wildlife Park near Plymouth (at least that one has a big city very closeby to provide it with visitors.).

06-07-2008

It might actually work well for Manor House, as someone else pointed out they will have little competition if they do introduce the larger, 'crowd-pulling' african species. Folly farm is still very much in the early stages of diversifying, and the other Welsh collections don't really present much competition. Please tell me those chimpanzees are long gone from Manor house?!

Dartmoor, although looking like a valiant effort, doesn't appear to really have the spare cash to do anything else, unless either his book sells well or the visitor numbers radically increase this year. Recent new arrivals being assasin bugs, lovebirds and a capybara, suggest mabye there's not a great deal available for redevelopment or meaningful new exhibits. I hope I'm wrong of course.

06-07-2008

i visited dartmoor a few weeks ago and there is a lot of development going on, a new reptile/amphibian house is being furbished (all be it a long way off) and work revamping old wire mesh enclosures is still going on. also a brand new stable has been constructed and leads onto a field. I'm guessing this is for zebra as they have always been on their wishlist, but we will have to wait and see as it could be for anything. Either way there is alot going on for such a small place, and they have some big impressive animals there that are viewed in very different ways to some zoo's

06-07-2008

Both are in fairly similar locations, but while Dartmoor is located only about 8 miles outside Plymouth, ensuring a reasonable number of visitors if they get their publicity right, the nearest city to Manor House is Swansea but its further away while the immediate area is very rural. So I'm a bit perplexed as to where their visitor base will come from, apart from holidaymakers at Tenby in July/August. If they can become a well advertised main animal collection for the whole area, they will be able to attract people from further afield though.

Manor House Wildlife Park Celebrity Opening
06-07-2008

Very interesting comments to my original posting . In yesterday's local paper there was a piece about Anna R-R inviting her celebrity friends to a launch in August .

It seemed to me that most of the money spent so far had been on the non-animal side of the property , where the experience is I guess . Also these make over shows can achieve an awful lol of work in a very short time . I feel that would be needed to reopen soon .

The West Wales Holiday season for families is very short . Folly Farm is a very attractive visitor experience for children , having been there with a 4 year old . The zoo area is not large but in my opinion of a reasonable standard and well presented .

When Manor Park was in its hey-day its gardens were very attractive , a bit like a smaller version of Cotswold Wildlife Park with the walled gardens . It seems to have gone backwards since then apart from the new paddocks .

The chimps are long gone , the same cage has housed siamangs for years , from memory a pair was formed twice , bred , then one of the pair has died , the first time with a replacement , now back to one again . It was a horrible chimp cage , marginally better for smaller siamangs .

Incidentally just down the road from Folly Farm Begelly Countryside Gardens has a monkey rescue sanctuary with rhesus and Barbary macaque , patas , common marmosets , there last week .

I also visited Silent World in Tenby . I really like this interesting little collection , always something unusual there , this time in particular dwarf seahorse - hippocampus zosterae , very small and camouflagednever seen them before , also black Peruvian stick insect , peruphasma schultei I think.

06-07-2008

Exactly. Its really only about six weeks.

I think several of the other farm parks and smaller collections nearby which you mention are sideline enterprises to other businesses e.g. farms? whereas Manor House probably won't be? Maybe she still has a lot of income from T.V. but I wonder if she has realised yet what a huge financial drain a medium-sized or larger wildlife park in a rural area could be. She should perhaps look at what Port Lympne have had to do...