The Demise of the Once Famous Belle Vue Zoological Gardens

For over 140 years visitors flocked to Manchester’s Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, making the tourist attraction one of the most popular in the whole of North-West England. Yet today little remains of this once iconic venue.

By Margaret Brecknell

Belle Vue owed its existence to a businessman from Stockport called John Jennison, who during the 1830s was given the opportunity to lease a Manchester pub called the “Belle Vue”, to which a large plot of land was attached. Jennison worked as a gardener and for a decade or so had opened the garden at his own home in Stockport to the public during the summer months. To increase the attractions on offer, he had added a small aviary and brewhouse to the site, but space meant that there was then little further scope for expansion, hence the move to Belle Vue.

His new venture at Belle Vue opened its doors to the public for the first time in 1836. However, despite its immediate popularity, Jennison found himself, in the early 1840s, in severe financial difficulties. Not only did Belle Vue face increased competition from the recently opened Manchester Zoological Gardens, but

he was experiencing serious cashflow problems as a result of being unable to sell his former home in Stockport. In December 1841 Jennison faced bankruptcy proceedings in Manchester and it seemed that he would be compelled to sell Belle Vue. In the event, his attempts to sell the attraction proved unsuccessful and his creditors took what, in hindsight, proved to be the very wise decision to allow him further time to make a success of the venture.

Before long, Jennison was able to repay his creditors in full. The opening of a new railway station nearby gave visitors easier access to the attraction and the closure of the Manchester Zoological Gardens in 1842 not only removed one of Belle Vue’s closest competitors, but also gave Jennison the opportunity to acquire some of its animals.

Plan Of Belle Vue Zoological Gardens From 1892 Guide

Belle Vue Zoo was the first privately funded zoo in the country. An advertisement in the Manchester Courier reveals that by 1854 the menagerie included “five lions and lionesses, four hyenas, four leopards and jaguars, a puma, and numerous other quadrupeds, in addition to several hundred birds, aquatic fowl, etc”.

In 1872, by which time John Jennison had passed away and his sons were in charge, the zoo acquired an elephant called Maharajah from Wombwell’s Menagerie in Edinburgh for the then princely sum of £680. The elephant made headline news when he attempted to escape from the railway carriage in which he was travelling south by tearing off the roof of his compartment with his trunk. It was decided that it would be safer to walk him from Edinburgh to Manchester. Accompanied by his trainer, Lorenzo Lawrence, the journey took ten days.

Maharajah became a popular attraction at the zoo. He was employed to give rides to visitors, as well as pulling carts of bricks. When the elephant died in 1882, his skeleton was put on permanent display at the zoo’s natural history museum. Following the museum’s closure, the skeleton was sold to Manchester Museum and in 2019 Maharajah finally made it to Manchester’s Piccadilly Station, when his skeleton was put on special display there for a limited period.

Maharajah’s trainer, Lawrence, decided to stay in Manchester with his charge and remained as Belle Vue’s head elephantkeeper for some forty years. An incident in 1912, by which time Lawrence had reached the age of 70, illustrates just how hazardous the job could be at times. An elephant with several children on its back suddenly took fright and the keeper was compelled to run in front of his charge to prevent the animal running off. He was knocked down and had to be taken to the Royal Infirmary for treatment to injuries sustained on his legs. Fortunately, all the children were unharmed.

Another of Belle Vue’s favourite late 19th-century residents was Consul the chimpanzee, who arrived in 1893 from a zoo in London. He was dressed in a smoking jacket and cap and was trained to puff on a pipe. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, because of this unhealthy lifestyle, the popular chimpanzee only survived a year, but he was replaced by Consul II, whose party tricks included playing the violin whilst riding a tricycle around the grounds.

By the early 20th century Belle Vue’s collection of animals had grown to such an extent that the zoo was now the third largest in the country and it even continued to operate during the World War I years, despite the logistical problems involved in ensuring all the animals had sufficient to eat during periods of food shortages.

In 1925 the Jennison family’s long connection with Belle Vue finally came to an end when the attraction was sold to a new company, Belle Vue (Manchester) Ltd. By this stage the attractions on offer at Belle Vue already included a small amusement park near to the main entrance.

One ride, the Ocean Wave, had caused considerable excitement when it opened in the early 1890s. “A circular platform, equipped like the bridge of a ship, is set among scenery painted to represent the waves of the ocean during a high wind. Round the edge of the platform is a line of small yachts. Powerful machinery makes the platform revolve, and at the same time rise and fall, giving to the yachts a motion not unlike the one they have at sea”, reported the Manchester Times in July 1894. The reporter concluded that, “This seems to be a very popular form of entertainment, judging by the numbers who patronised it and their shrieks of laughter”.

Other rides were subsequently added including the Figure-8 Toboggan Ride, a type of early roller coaster, but by the time the new owners took charge of the park in the mid-1920s, most were beginning to look rather tired and dated.

The man now in day-to-day charge of Belle Vue was John Henry Iles, an entrepreneur with wide-ranging interests in the amusement park sector. He had ambitions to transform the amusement park at Belle Vue into an attraction which he hoped would rival the likes of Blackpool Pleasure Beach. The Figure-8 Toboggan was soon replaced by the Scenic Railway. Many other new rides were introduced including the Dodgems, Ghost Train and Caterpillar Ride. One of Belle Vue’s most iconic rides, Bobs Roller Coaster, was also acquired around this time.

Iles also looked to expand the sporting facilities on offer at Belle Vue. He decided to convert the existing athletics stadium into a venue for dirt track speedway, a new sport which had originated in Australia and was now beginning to gain popularity in the UK. When the new speedway stadium opened in March 1929, it was the largest of its kind in the country with covered accommodation for up to 40,000 spectators.

The Hyde Road stadium became for many years the home of Manchester’s famous Belle Vue Aces speedway team, but it also served as a venue for a number of other sports.

In 1928 Iles joined forces with a former director of Manchester City, John Ayrton, to form a new football club called Manchester Central. In an example of the ambitious plans Iles and Ayrton had for the new club, the then FA Cup holders, Blackburn Rovers, were invited to play a match at Belle Vue in September 1928. Manchester Central subsequently applied to join the Football League on two occasions, but both bids failed after formal protests from the two existing Manchester league clubs (City and United), who, it appears, were concerned regarding the potentially increased competition for support and revenue from a third league club. Only a few years after its unsuccessful bid for league status, Manchester Central FC went out of business.

Another innovation during Iles’ period in charge was the first staging of what became the annual Christmas Circus at Belle Vue’s Kings Hall. George Lockhart, who was wellknown for his appearances at the famous Tower Circus in Blackpool,

Belle Vue Blue Plaque by Gerald England/CC BY-SA 2.0 acted as the Ringmaster throughout that first Christmas season. His name became inextricably linked with that of the Belle Vue International Circus. He remained as Ringmaster for an extraordinary 43 years until his eventual retirement, in 1972, at the grand old age of 90.

John Henry Iles was eventually forced to resign in 1937 after an unwise decision to invest in a film production company left him in deep financial trouble. However, John’s nephew, Gerald, continued to serve as zoo director for more than two decades. Gerald Iles had taken on the role in March 1933 at the tender age of just 21. He was in charge throughout the difficult years of World War II, when nearly all his experienced keepers were called up for active service. Manchester was heavily bombed during the war and the zoo was compelled to have

Early 20th Century Postcard of Belle Vue’s Pheasantry and Penguin House

keepers, armed with rifles, on standby at all times of day and night in case the unthinkable happened and the zoo was hit, allowing its dangerous animals to escape.

Fortunately, Belle Vue only suffered minor bomb damage, but, sadly, some of its animals did perish during the war because of health issues arising from an enforced change of diet when food shortages really began to hit home.

Belle Vue’s success as one of the UK’s most popular tourist attractions continued during the years immediately following the end of World War II. In retrospect, its final swansong came during the “Swinging 60s” when the venue’s Kings Hall played host to some of the biggest music stars of the day. The likes of The Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin all played to sell-out crowds there.

The King’s Hall was also frequently used for hosting largescale exhibitions and in the 1960s could boast of possessing the largest exhibition space outside London. It appears that the potential offered by the King’s Hall, together with Belle Vue’s impressive hotel and catering facilities, was what compelled hotelier and restauranteur, Charles Forte, to take over control of the entire site in 1963.

It soon became apparent that Forte was intent on focusing on this side of the business at the expense of some of its other most popular attractions. In addition, changes in public attitude towards the treatment of animals kept in zoos and competing leisure activities elsewhere meant that by the 1970s the once thriving Belle Vue site was haemorrhaging money.

By 1977 the zoo was estimated to be running at a loss of around £100,000 per annum and in September of that year closed its doors for the last time, meaning that new homes had to be found for the zoo’s one thousand or so animals. The rest of the Belle Vue site followed suit within the matter of five years. Even the King’s Hall could not be saved, a victim in the early 1980s of increased competition from the newly opened G-Mex Exhibition Centre in Manchester city centre.

Now little trace remains of the Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, which at the height of their popularity attracted around two million visitors each year to the vast 165-acre site. This once iconic North-West tourist attraction only now lives on in the memories of those fortunate youngsters who were able to visit it during its mid-20th century heyday.