Despite being loved by many, Glasgow Zoo was eventually forced to close after it became the focus for ant-zoo campaigners, short of funds anyway, they ensured that what cash the zoo had was squandered fighting them, and that any plans to raise funds were delayed or blocked.
Of course, once these "Animal Lovers" engineered the Zoo's closure, they buggered off into the sunset, leaving the animals to be put down, shipped around the country and re-homed, or abandoned to lie and starve in the deserted zoo, surviving only thanks to local volunteers and redundant zoo staff who stepped in to try and look after them.
It now seems that in something that could be seen as the adding of insult to injury, Edinburgh Zoo will set up a setellite animal park in... Glasgow!
Having done little to help Glasgow Zoo, the city's councillors are doing their usual two-faced performance to opportunity and headline grabbing by announcing that they are willing to do whatever they can to help the visitor attraction find a base in the west. Although the reality is possibly more likely that they are being used as pawns in a funding battle Edinburgh Zoo is embarking on with its own local councillors.
The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland owns Edinburgh Zoo, and had plans to sell off land to a housing developer to provide funds for a £72 million expansion of the 100 year old Edinburgh Zoo rejected. The decision put the future of Edinburgh's conservation, research and education programme at threat. Edinburgh Zoo denies that it would ever leave the Capital, but looking at another site in Glasgow for expansion may be seen as a way of applying pressure on Edinburgh City Council.
Glasgow Zoo closed in 2003 with debts of over £5 million, before a land deal could be secured with a developer. Said to be in a poor location and with claims that a lack of finance meant that the animals were not kept in suitable accommodation.
Edinburgh Zoo now occupies 82 acres, has up to 650,000 visitors a year, and is on one of the main roads into the city.
This may sound rather spiteful but any more 'luxury' housing developments that get scuppered can't be a bad thing. I start to wonder if soon there will be any room in our towns and cities for the 'little people'.
The housing development in this picture was on zoo land, the Glasgow & West of Scotland Zoological Society wanted to sell this parcel off to developers for building in 2002 - a deal which would have cleared the zoo's debts and gave it a financial lifebelt to stay afloat. Glasgow city council refused the application as the land was 'Greenbelt', due to this the zoo closed down in late 2003. But hey! I hear you ask why is there houses now on the very land that Glasgow city council refused permission to the zoo for ? Quite simply that after they got what they wanted - the closure of the zoo - they re-zoned the land to 'Greenfield Release' - and the very same developers purchased it and now completed the up-market scheme. and now they want a bit of Edinburgh Zoo? Ye couldn't make it up if ye tried.
and here is one a number of photos I took while on a prowl through Calderpark last year. I remember this as a wee boy when it was full of monkies and the like.
If you haven't found any of the original exploration stories, carried out just after the zoo closed, them you wouldn't be far wrong as the party came face to face with Adimula...
After the so-called "animal welfare" creeps drained the zoo of what little cash it had in fighting actions they kept bringing against it, and forced its closure, they waltzed off into the sunset rubbing their hands with glee at another "success" - and left the homeless animals to be dispersed, or put down if no new homes could be found for them.
Now that's what I call looking after their best interests.
Nowadays, your more likely to have a problem with neds, and kids with airguns from what I've seen.
You know, I think I'd always be just a little bit nervous about wandering round a deserted zoo. Just in case it wasn't quite deserted...
Hi and welcome Ambriel, No fear for me - this is my zone, I was born a stone's throw away and grew up in the vicinity, I know every blade of grass personally and know whats below the ground as well as whats on it.
Apollo, I clicked the link but old Turbo only shows thumbnails and has a wall around the fullsize pics, canny see the point in that.
Don't think anybody has found the ice house yet .. ...... hopefully.
It's alright, it's no you, just me assuming other people's thought processes are as demented as mine!
Turbo's site needs registration to see the pics, but if you refresh or revisit the page I linked to you will get a different set of random thumbnails each time, so although they're small, you can get a selection of pics even if you don't want to sign up
It will eventually show the abandoned tiger Adimula
I think the least the folk that bankrupted the zoo and shut it down could have done was to take it in turns and go along there and stick a limb in the cage each day, until a new home was found. It might even have motivated them to do something useful, like help an animal rather than... yup, shut up.. I've said it all before.
I did have a chance wander nearby a while ago, and the wrought iron gate had been torn apart by the vandals, and the entrance was barred to vehicles by a two metre steel fence set into the ground. You can still just walk around, it's not really a security fence, just a vehicle barrier.
It wouldn't matter if it was, since the vandals have burnt out the wee white gatehouse that used to stand to the left, and there are no doors or windows left, so you could just walk into the site that way. Funnily enough, the gate in the parlk at the back has been more or less secured now. Which does matter, as it bars the way to those who used to dump rubbish there.
I don't think I had a camera with me that day, I'll have to have a search in the pit.
I don't get this 'abandoned Adimula' scenario at all.
The zoo closed (25 Aug.2003) I was given the freedom to wander all over the zoo on 25 November 2003 (I remember the date well because I went on holiday to Australia the next day) by Roger Edwards the last Chief Executive of the zoo and was given a brief tour by the last head keeper - a chap I've known since school and who is now an inspector with the SSPCA (he featured in a 2 page story in the Daily Record a few weeks ago in fact see HERE), an animal lover to his boots. This man would not abandon a big cat. After the guided tour - which was really to show me a deep well and the ice house, me and my daughter were allowed to wander all over the place and saw the animals that were still there awaiting re-homing, we never saw a tiger. If memeory serves me correctly the ones left at that time were Soay sheep and antelopes or similar, grass eaters. Apart from Billy the head keeper there was still another 5 or 6 keepers there looking after the remnants of the animal stock and doing other jobs before the site was abandoned completely.
I cannot believe that this animal was abandoned and left alone, apart from the cruelty of this I'd imagine it would have been a criminal offence.
Glasgow Zoo staff did not abandon any of the animals as far as I know. Efforts were made to find homes for all that would be accepted by other zoos, but I'm also sure there were cases where there was nowhere for some of the exotica or dangerous species to go, with the inevitable result.
The people I am venting my spite on are the "animal lovers" who want to see all the zoos shut, and do their business on places like Glasgow Zoo, then run off to the next victim without a care in the world or any responsibility for what they have "achieved".
I'm afraid it's too long ago for me to dig out the the specific exploration or gallery where the explorers found themselves looking in a pen which they were shocked to find the tiger in, but I most certainly read it back then - and it stuck ever since.
I have to admit also that I never followed it up in any way and assumed (yes, I know, never assume) that the situation would have been dealt with. I had other, much more important life problems at the actual time of the closure - I didn't even know about it until more than a year after the zoo was closed, and even that was a bit of shock to me back them - and that's why I made the assumption that it would have been done and dusted by then.
Despite what the so-called advocates for the animal claim, I still believe Glasgow Zoo and the staff were amongst the best around, after all it was the Zoological Society, and whenever the staff appeared in public - and they were often on TV - there never seemed to be any evidence of anything other than care - even if the place did end up featuring in Taggart (Nest of Vipers).
Anyone familiar with the road that led down to Calderbank House will be disappointed to hear that this has gone, replaced by an access road cut into the former route to allow construction traffic to access the land and ground of the house.
As you know I'm familiar with that road ............... I was born there and disappointed to hear of its desecration but not surprised as six and a half years have passed since the mysterious fire that burned down the mansion house - and the world record breaking two days that it took to demolish and remove the building. I'll hae a wander doon sometime soon to see if they've done anything about the mineral railway tunnel.
Just slipping the entrance shots I grabbed - while avoiding being flattened by the traffic which, for some odd reason, always seems to multiply when I wander onto the road for a shot...
Although the road through the entrance looks much the same, as you'll realise, the area to the right of the original road is now full of houses, so it has been cut off to the right, and the avenue with the lampposts is gone as you look down it. I thought better of pointing a camera down at the guys working there - you never know the reaction once you've been spotted, and technically, this may not be public ground at the moment, so could be legal trouble too.
Pics 2 and 3 are the entrance to the avenue from the Hangman's Brae (not just my terminology but also press and council reports) but hope against hope due to the collapse of the property market - maybe the old mansion house site will survive for a wee bit longer.
It's not immediately clear, but the first pic is just to the right of the entrance to Hangman's Brae, so facing traffic coming down the hill.
Afraid I don't know how far down the houses go, but I wouldn't hold out any expectation of the old site. The houses went down as far as the end of the avenue, and are all fully built, if not yet entirely finished, so it would be fair to assume that they extend all the way to the right as far as possible to the hill/cliff that borders the Clyde.
I actually tried walking back up Muirhead Road into the back of Baillieston, then down south towards the railway again, from John Cowies's taxi garage, but without a map or better knowledge I couldn't work out how to get to the path that led down to the Avenue again, and arrives just north of the road to the old site. I'd met people walking their dogs that way, but they must have already been south of the railway as I couldn't find any way across the track from the northern side. I see that even the aerial maps show the path is not connected across the track either, so I was probably not being very smart.
That's where I went, and it ended Bracadale Gardens.
On foot, it looks as if that's the end of the road and carrying on takes you into someone's garden and the access road to the house on the other side of the railway.
Without knowing better, I draw the line at marching into/across gardens and homes - and it would be a lot shorter just to jump the wall on Muirside Road and waddle through the woods, out of sight.
Actually, looking at Live Search, their images are fairly now, and suggest the development and cleared area stops short of going around the bend towards the old house site.
The Bird's Eye looks even newer, and shows the building still present on the stadium, but I can't see the lighting gantries, so they might have been whipped away before they buildings were removed.
That's where I went, and it ended Bracadale Gardens.
On foot, it looks as if that's the end of the road and carrying on takes you into someone's garden and the access road to the house on the other side of the railway.
Without knowing better, I draw the line at marching into/across gardens and homes - and it would be a lot shorter just to jump the wall on Muirside Road and waddle through the woods, out of sight.
Actually, looking at Live Search, their images are fairly now, and suggest the development and cleared area stops short of going around the bend towards the old house site.
The Bird's Eye looks even newer, and shows the building still present on the stadium, but I can't see the lighting gantries, so they might have been whipped away before they buildings were removed.
Ye ended up @ Bracadale because you never turned right into the street that takes you down to the track which goes under the viaduct. The mansion house site will be safe for a while yet I think as it wasn't on the plans I looked at in Planning Dept offices in W.George Street a couple of years ago.
Did I ever tell you that there are two capped deep mine shafts under the grass at the dog track?
Honest, I did turn tight and go down Station Road, and clung to the right.
I don't what it took you to in Ye Olden Days, but now it goes down a track which runs along the back of the houses that are at the end of Baracadale Grove (see the Live Search aerial view) and ends in a locked gate that bar access to the railway track. There is no viaduct or crossing there, and there's only the bridge over Muirhead Road visible to the right, and I think some trees that partly hide the smaller crossing to the left. There's no way across the track, not over at least, to be seen.
I was obviously within spitting distance of the viaduct you are referring to... ...
AHA!!!
Found it on the Google view, the shadows hide it better in Live Search, AND the road line of the map is absent, but is still shown in Google!
Starts on Station Road, but I think your direction was subject to misinterpretation by muggins who took the right turn to be the one into Station Road, not the more important and less intuitive right turn into Loancroft Avenue (as it appears to go back in the route just walked), then Muirhead Gardens, and rather oddly, Muirhead Gardens - which goes two ways, east and south, with south being the useful one.
Ah well.
Or I could just have jumped down the hillside from that track I was on if I'd know about the viaduct. Believe it or not, I was pondering over the existence of that swingpark there, and how the kids got to it. Oh well, that's for the next wander, when the rain stops.
More mine shafts???
Obviously they don't come as a surprise - maybe Wullie Combes has found them, and that where all the waste from his yard to the west goes?
To hark back a wee bit - this was the viaduct you should have walked under Apollo but its just as well ye didn't because after 300 yards of the nice rural track ..................
Was down there today (as I had reason to be in the area) and had a wander around. I don't think I will ever return.
Did anyone here watch the Scottish comedy show "Legit"? Basically about two traders in a 'Barras' style market.
The reason I ask in this thread is that one of the episodes revolves around one of the guys trying to get a pet monkey for his son and he uses a contact in the Zoo. The series wasn't that old, the pilot airing in 2006, the series in 2007.
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Glasgow Zoo - derelict and razed
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