Old Zoo Advert, pre-1971

An advert on an old map of Torquay. There are no dates but it is pre-decimal. Open till 7.30pm - you got your money's worth in those days! And I like the huge reptiles and poisonous snakes!

Those were the days - if the pay-box was open until 7.30 p.m. does that mean you could come in then and stay till say 9.30 p.m. at the height of summer? I like the plural PARROT HOUSES, but what are "Continental-style picnic lawns"?

Just thinking that the pay-box thing must mean the closing time as presumably no one would be let in at dusk in winter.

"Continental-style picnic lawns" - hmm, maybe they mean sitting outside at wooden tables with benches rather than on your tartan blanket?

I can remember virtually everything listed on this advert except Hippos. I think maybe they were Pygmy, not Common Hippo- but I do not remember them or whereabouts they lived.

That must be it!

I think I have seen somewhere that Paignton had Pygmy Hippos. I'll have a quick glance at "The Penguin Guide to British Zoos" - yes, here we are on page 127: "pigmy hippo (one of the very few in Britain)".

I had a quick Google because I thought the presence of Hippos might date the advert and I discovered that, according to the Herald Express archives, someone saw them in March 2011 :

"The biggest attraction of the zoo are of course the animals — and there are plenty of spacious end clean animal enclosures around — from the biggest, such as lions, tigers, zebras, elephants, gorillas, giraffes, rhinos and hippos to a great variety of monkeys and smaller animals and birds."

As his book was published in 1970 it could be that Geoffrey Schomberg's information was from 1969 and if there was one Pygmy Hippo there then and "hippos" in the advertisement then.................but of course maybe we should not the plural in the advertisement literally.

Wait a minute, I've just looked again at the advertisement and it says "Hippopotamus" in the singular unlike the other things. Oh well, there was a Pygmy Hippo at the zoo around 1970.

To the best of my knowledge Paignton Zoo never had common hippopotamus but did have two pygmy hippos.

Paignton’s first pygmy hippopotamus, “Percy III”, was received from Ilfracombe Zoo in 1954 and died at Paignton in 1969. ("Percy" was originally a London Zoo animal; he lived at London Zoo from 1939 until being sent to Ilfracombe in 1952.)

Paignton’s second pygmy hippopotamus, “Peggy” was acquired from London Zoo 1960 where she had lived since 1932; she died in Paignton in 1967.

Both long-lived animals from your data.

I would have visited Paignton during that period more than once but have no recollection of one. Do you know whereabouts in the zoo they were kept?