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Gigit

Old Building Revealed (#1 of 3) 7 March 2012

The vegetation behind the Echidna and Red Panda enclosures has been cut back revealing this old building, which is attached to the cottage aviary. Does anyone know what used to live here?

Old Building Revealed (#1 of 3) 7 March 2012
Gigit, 7 Mar 2012
    • Gigit
      The vegetation behind the Echidna and Red Panda enclosures has been cut back revealing this old building, which is attached to the cottage aviary. Does anyone know what used to live here?
    • Pertinax
      I can't envisage where about this is (where are the Red Pandas then?) but they look to me as if it was a range Aviaries as the brick structures look like Aviary shelters to me.

      Its coming back!- is this somewhere near the old original entrance? After the old Lion and Tiger enclosures, there was a steep path somewhere around there running up the Hill with bird aviaries- there used to Choughs in one before they were moved. I have never seen that area since the new Entrance was done.
    • Gigit
      It's above the Primley area, near the tortoises and parrots, the Cottage Aviary and Reptile Nursery buildings. I think you've got the position right as it borders on the car park, which is where I remember seeing lions and tigers (before it was a car park).

      I thought I'd seen everything in the zoo so it was quite an exciting revelation :) You can see the roof of an aviary behind it - you can often hear birds in there.
    • Bele
      As Pertinax says , I can also remember a range of aviaries , quite a few with parrots in them , running up the side of a steep path with the old Tropical Range on the other side of the path . Could it be them ?
    • Gigit
      Aviaries were my first thought, particularly as it is a bird area now. It is on a steep slope.

      As an aside, you can see parts of the 'old' zoo here (including some very outdated keepering!):

      Devon - Paignton - British Path
    • Parrotsandrew
      Looking at the map in the 1959 guidebook there is something attached to the Cottage Aviary, but it does not have a reference number! From the map it looks as though there was a little quadrangle-type arrangement with something (this building presumably) leading from the Cottage Aviary to the bottom of an L-shaped exhibit - the "Birds of Prey Enclosures". The top of the L was attached to the "Rhesus Monkey Cottage". Was this the current Reptile Nursery? It is on the same site even if it is not the same building.

      Moving on to my only other older guidebook (not sure of the date, but it mentions the Gibbons on the island having bred for the first time in 1967, oh and it mentions trees and shrubs planted in 1971 and 1972 - I can't see any other dates [there was no clue from the price of the book as it is not shown, anyway it is obviously from the decimal era]) and there was by then something (again not numbered) in the centre of the quadrangle - a wonky ovalish shape. The good news is that the exhibit leading from the Cottage Aviary is now numbered and it was "Owl Row". What had been the horizontal part of the L is now not joined to the other bit and it is not numbered either. What was previously the vertical part of the L was still a row of birds of prey aviaries. Barbary "Apes" had usurped the Rhesus Monkeys.

      What is confusing me is that the photo looks like the front, i.e. public side of the aviaries, yet the ones that were attached to the Cottage Aviary clearly had to be viewed from the other side. Am I missing something?
    • Gigit
      Very interesting and intriguing, Parrotsandrew. I don't have any records that go back that far and have just re-read 'Chimps, Champs & Elephants' without finding any clues.
    • Parrotsandrew
      I've just received a copy of the 1987 guide via the sale of the Bartlett Society's surplus material, and that area is annotated as the Cottage Aviary and "Birds of Prey/Owls". No real change from the 1970s by the looks of it.
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