I recently read the alternate history book 'Liberation Square' by Gareth Rubin. "After the disastrous failure of D-Day, Britain is rescued by Russian and American soldiers. The two superpowers divide the nation between them, a wall running through London like a scar". Britain is divided with a border going from just north of Bristol, past Oxford and up to the Wash. South and east is the 'Republic of Great Britain' with the UK taking up the rest of the country. The book calls this 'Democratic United Kingdom'. My personal view is that in this scenario the democratic bit would just call itself the United Kingdom as it always had and I would have gone with People's Republic of Great Britain or Democratic Republic of Great Britain for the communist entity but never mind... The government of the West - or more accurately the North - appears to be in Edinburgh. The book doesn't clearly state this but it does mention that the royal family are based in Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. Greenwich Park becomes the centre of government for the communist state. You can see the route of London's 'Berlin wall' here. Regent's Park is right on the border in the western part of the city with the zoo up against the wall. I can't quite tell due to lack of detail on the map but the I think the wall goes along Prince Albert Road. Reading the book, my immediate thought was, would communist 'East London' have its own 'Tierpark'? And where would it be? It would need to be relatively central and well served by public transport. Victoria Park becomes the main London park of the communist side and perhaps a zoo could be carved out of it in a reflection of Regent's Park. I think they might have gone for a bigger and better philosophy though and that could perhaps mean somewhere on Hampstead Heath which I think is on the communist side or maybe south of the Thames. South of the river is entirely in the communist part of the city so that opens up a number of options.Richmond Park maybe? Or a combined botanical and zoological gardens at Kew perhaps? Interestingly according to this scenario, Whipsnade is also part of the 'Republic of Britain'. My feeling is that a communist capital city of London would want a zoo of its own and whilst Whipsnade might remain in place, a number of its inhabitants would be moved into town. I like the idea of a zoo at Kew myself, something I have often imagined anyway. Where would you place London's Tierpark?
Bumping this to see if anyone has any thoughts; under lockdown it might be something interesting to consider and kill some time.
Perhaps Burgess Park would be a good location for South London's Zoo, and the two would have a pseudo-rivalry to see which has the most species, like the Berliners.
Interesting! I would have to cross the wall to go to school every day! Burgess is pretty tiny despite how it looks on a map. I don't see it having a zoo inside it personally. A lot of it is sports venues, which are still portrayed as green on the map because they are inside the park. The park is, in its entirety, just a tiny bit larger than ZSL as well, so that would mean people in the area would be left without a green space. Although I don't find the liberation square counterfactualism particularly convincing nor very likely even if a similar chain of events were to take place, I would say that London is a really diverse and polarised city, with the exceedingly rich living within a few hundred metres of the very poorest in the city. There is a slight resemblance between Southwark and surrounding area and East Berlin however (I live there, so I should know) but I wouldn't make the split where the author made it. Anyway, if this were to take palce, I would probably nominate Dulwich and surrounding area for the 'Tierpark'. Similar to Camden in many ways - quite stylish, with a diverse array of citizens living there and a large park provide a good setting for the new zoo. However, I would say that Dulwich hasn't got the best transport connections - no real tube line passing through it, just a few buses. Having said that, I have been there many times, but more for proximity reasons than anything else.
Dulwich is an interesting idea and I would imagine that in this alternate reality transport networks would develop quite differently on the ‘East’ side of the wall and possibly lead to it being more conveniently accessible. What’s now Dulwich Park, playing fields, a golf course and woods could add up to quite a significant area of land.
I missed this thread at the time it was originally posted; it definitely raises more than a few interesting alt-history questions! I may have to think the question over awhile, but my gut feeling is that Kew would be the likeliest option.
Kew's on the wrong side of the border unfortunately, although it would be a rather lovely place for a zoo .
A fascinating question indeed, alt history is always a charm to study, and seeing it being adapted for a zoological point of view is ingenious. Whilst on the map you presented I don’t really see an adequate spot for a decent zoo which could rival the one in Regents Park, perhaps Clapham Common or Brockwell Park could both be adequate for this zoo?
Rereading the original post, I see that I am wrong - didn’t realise the entire south side was ‘easy’. I guess Kew would be quite a good candidate then.
The animal collection of an "Eastern" London Zoo would be interesting. There would be many Eastern European and Central Asian animals, like in actual zoos of Eastern Germany, Czekoslovakia or Poland during communist times.
I think the whole topic of this 'Tierpark London' is really interesting, so if somebody will start detailed planning of this zoo, I'd love to join.
I think Kew would be the most practical site for a number of reasons, especially given the post-war conditions with significant shortages of building materials and other resources. It’s an enclosed site with perimeter walls and fences already in place. It has administrative buildings and staff facilities as well as workshops, yards and areas for the necessary support infrastructure and utilities. There are visitor gates, catering outlets, ticket booths and so on. It had been bombed in our timeline and who knows what state it would be in. But they wouldn't be starting from scratch. Kew is well-served by trains and buses although the tube would no longer go south of the river here. Access from central London to Richmond would be via the line to Waterloo with no connections north of the Thames. Kew Gardens station could have a shuttle service to Richmond pending the possible construction of any new lines. Kew is a large site and a decent sized collection (remembering husbandry standards of the mid twentieth century) could be accommodated without too much disruption to the existing botanic gardens, especially if the larger animal houses were located on the areas taken up by lawns. It’s worth noting that the closed border between the two Britains runs through the Thames here so the grounds along the river would probably be blocked off for security reasons. This would include the end of the Syon Vista, a long open avenue that looks out across the river to Syon House, an impressive stately home on the north bank of the Thames. This could open the area to the construction of paved paths and rows of enclosures, perhaps like the Tierpark deer paddocks. There would almost certainly be no official desire to preserve the iconic view across the river, quite the opposite in fact. In the longer term there would probably be support from and exchanges with the Soviet Union and the rest of the communist block (which presumably includes much of continental Europe in this timeline) but I imagine the zoo would initially be stocked with animals from Whipsnade. I don't know if the immediate post war inventory list of Whipsnade is available anywhere but there is a map of the zoo from 1939 here. A fairly high res map of Kew in 1939 can be seen here.
The scenario outlined (without much detail) in the book raises many questions. It’s notable for example that the Labour-supporting industrial heartlands with the vast bulk of the urban working classes outside London fall under the ‘west’ rather than in the communist zone and that some of the richest parts of the country which traditionally vote Tory are in the communist state. Would a democratic UK without London (without easy access to London at least) be more decentralised? What would it mean for a country so often simply (but incorrectly) referred to as England (including by its own population and ruling elite - read any diarist, royal or political biography from the early to mid twentieth century for example) to have its provisional capital and primary royal residence in Scotland? Given the differences in legal systems and finance would the Bank of England and Royal Courts of Justice end up somewhere in the midlands or north of England with the houses of parliament in Edinburgh? Or would it just be the royal family living primarily at Holyrood with national institutions and parliament sitting in a British equivalent of Bonn such as Nottingham, York or Chester for example? What impact would it have on the universities with the elite institutions of Oxford and Cambridge in the communist zone? To return to how zoos might be impacted, many privately owned, often small, zoos sprang up in the 1960s. I wonder if a communist Britain (essentially the south of England) would instead see the growth of municipal city zoos. Places like Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton, Norwich, Reading, Winchester and more could join Bristol with significant collections. What about safari parks? Properties like Longleat and Woburn would be seized and nationalised and it is unlikely that the safari park concept would establish itself here.
