Creating a Conservation Hub at the Bristol Zoo Gardens site

Historic items and memorabilia from the former Bristol Zoo Gardens are to feature in a permanent, free exhibition of the zoo’s history.

Image credit: Perkins & Will

As part of the site’s redevelopment, Bristol Zoological Society plans to transform the iconic zoo entrance building into a new Clifton Conservation Hub.

It will become home to a number of items which we have kept and preserved so they can be put on display to the public.

They include the most important Alfred the gorilla mask, the death mask. It will be displayed alongside items such as the original Zoo Keepers' ‘Animal Bedtime’ Bell, and the original founding documents for the site (currently stored for safekeeping in Bristol City Council’s archives).

The Conservation Hub will also feature a public café with indoor and outdoor seating, exhibition space, education and meeting spaces, and will become home to the Avon Gorge & Downs Wildlife Project.

Our plans for the old zoo include 196 homes – of which 20 percent will be affordable. The site will also be open to the public as a park, free to access for the first time in its history. This means everyone will be able to see the now-listed Bear Pit, Aviary and Monkey Temple.

Following an extensive process to ensure the most important artefacts were identified and preserved, we held a number of public auctions last month of the remaining items, which couldn’t be repurposed or recycled. These included original zoo signage, animal sculptures and Victorian benches.

In total, the events raised more than £206,000, which will help fund the creation of a new conservation zoo at Bristol Zoo Project, as well as our important conservation and education work. To give an example, the bench auction alone raised £25,000, which is equivalent to almost one year’s funding for our programme in Madagascar, where we work with local communities and partners to monitor wildlife and protect and restore the habitats that are home to the wonderful blue-eyed black lemurs.

As well as the exhibition at the new Clifton Conservation Hub, we also want to keep some of the history on display at Bristol Zoo Project, to keep the story of our conservation charity alive. For this reason, we are currently recreating the old herbaceous border from the Clifton site, at Bristol Zoo Project. This involves transplanting the plants and moving the Mute Swan bronze sculpture, which was in the former Bristol Zoo Gardens.