Edinburgh Zoo celebrates 100 years with exhibition

On the crest for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, flanked by a penguin and a sea lion, is a gannet in flight. It’s probably not the most glamorous species to make an appearance at Edinburgh Zoo but it can lay claim to being the first. Thomas Gillespie, a Dumfries lawyer and the zoo’s founder, paid 8d for it in an Edinburgh pet shop. It had been found, bedraggled and exhausted, on the Leith waterfront. In the 100 years since the zoo was founded in 1913, thousands of creatures great and small have resided on that Corstorphine hill, but the gannet was first.

This is Edinburgh Zoo’s centenary year, and a number of events are planned to mark the occasion. Kicking things off is an exhibition at the Central Library in Edinburgh which opens on 3 April. The zoo today has progressed and adapted beyond what Thomas Gillespie might ever have imagined, but Chris West, the CEO of The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, says that the foundations remain unchanged.

“I think that he would be proud of it if he could see it today,” he says. “I think it would still fit with his founding principles of connecting people with a sense of nature, and being progressive in terms of how animals are looked after. Today it has a scientific basis as well so I’d like to think he would recognise the pride, tradition, principles and values.

In its original charter, the Zoological Society outlined its principle objective: “To promote, facilitate and encourage the study of zoology and kindred subjects and to foster and develop amongst the people an interest in and knowledge of animal life.”

The zoo is an Edinburgh institution today, but Gillespie – who had spent his childhood fascinated by animals – faced an uphill struggle when it came to founding it. His idea was met with scepticism, not least because a zoo set up in Edinburgh in 1840 had failed and because Edinburgh’s climate was considered unsuitable for exotic beasts.

However he managed to set up the Zoological Society in 1909 and secured backing from fundraisers and the council to buy the 85-acre site around Corstorphine Hill House for £17,000.

In 1908 Gillespie read an article about a new animal park near Hamburg designed by Carl Hagenbeck. Animals were kept in the open in a climate more severe than Edinburgh’s and fared just fine.He was drawn to this idea of large, open, attractive enclosures which was in sharp contrast to the Victorian approach of caged animals. The design involved using ditches and moats, rather than bars, to separate the animals from the public. Gillespie brought in the pioneering town planner Patrick Geddes to design the site.

“If people visit the zoo now, in the lower part, where there are duck ponds and the old sea lion pool you can still get a flavour of what it would have been like back then,” says West. “Little pathways going through wooded areas with cascading water and interconnected pools.”

Gillespie knew the approach he wanted to take; now he just needed to find occupants for his zoo. Just before it opened officially on 22 July, 1913, he was loaned a travelling zoo, with the animals arriving by railway then being taken in carts to the site. Staff had to quickly figure out how to contain the lions as they were taken out of their cages.

In his book, Story of The Edinburgh Zoo, Gillespie writes: “The animals were due to arrive at 7:30. My impatience could not wait and I was at the platform at Corstorphine Station by half past six! It was a lovely sunny summer morning on that Saturday and the animals in their travelling boxes were soon detrained and loaded on to lorries which formed a procession to the zoo, two camels bringing up the rear. Some of the newcomers found their quarters quite ready for them but by no means all.”

The day didn’t pass without mishap. A wolf was kept in an enclosure with an earth floor and quickly burrowed under it and walked around the park. “It gave rise to the rumour, which spread all over Edinburgh” wrote Gillespie, “that a hyena in the zoo had burrowed through six feet of concrete!”

“Health and safety would have a fit nowadays,” says West. “When I look back I just think these people were incredibly dedicated, committed and determined. The world they lived in, they had a real passion and compassion for nature and wanted to share it but in those days I think we felt nature was pretty much endless, bountiful. Now of course we’re in a completely different world so the zoo’s moved from being just a window into the natural world to almost a refugee camp for endangered species where people can still come and marvel but we’re doing serious conservation work.”

On 14 July, 1913, The Scotsman reported on the arrival of the first batch of animals to the zoo. The 90 beasts on board the train included bears, hyenas, wolves, leopards and lions. The lions included two young males who made a friend on arrival. This newspaper reported: “In the cage with them, quite at home, was a retriever dog, with whom one of the lions had a merry gambol.”

The camels “were lodged in the stables and when seen on Saturday evening were eating their food in great contentment. They are quiet enough to allow children to ride on their backs”.

When the zoo finally opened to the public on 22 July, 1913, it was a huge success. Writes Gillespie: “Even wet weather , when the new roads seemed to collect a sea of mud, was no deterrent; it only meant that if a person was seen in Edinburgh with very muddy shoes people remarked, ‘Oh, he’s been to the zoo!’”

Among the first animals were three King Penguins from South Georgia, brought back from a whaling expedition that docked in Leith in 1914. It was the first time penguins were seen anywhere in the world outside the South Atlantic and they are have remained a popular attraction to this day. The penguin parade came about by accident: in the 1950s a keeper left a gate to the penguin pool open by mistake and was followed around the zoo by a gang of penguins. The spectacle went down so well with visitors that it became a regular occurrence.

In 1919 the zoo hatched the first king penguin chick in captivity, and with its reputation for humane conditions and a commitment to the study of zoology, many more animals were born in captivity over the following years; a sea lion in 1934, wolves in 1938 and later the first orangutan to be born in the UK.

Over the past century, the zoo has been home to a number of famous inhabitants. One of the first big draws was Sundra, a four-year-old elephant who was gifted to the Zoo by the Maharajah of Mysore in 1914. She had a bespoke saddle made for her and gave rides to children.

Wojtek the “soldier bear” was loaned to the zoo by the Polish Army – who kept him as an unofficial mascot – in 1947, and Ricky the much-loved chimpanzee was 50 when he died last year.

While Gillespie’s vision for the zoo remains essentially unchanged, the world has changed immeasurably since it was founded 100 years ago. Edinburgh zoo continues to foster in its visitors “an interest in and knowledge of animal life” just as it set out to do a century ago. However today, says Chris West, it is also something of a “refugee camp for endangered species”.

The focus now is on research and conservation. Today, and looking ahead to the next 100 years of Edinburgh Zoo, says West, “I’d see us as a conservation charity that happens to run one of the world’s best zoos.”

• The free Edinburgh Zoo Centenary Exhibition will be held at the Central Library in Edinburgh from 3 April – 31 May. For more details visit www.edinburghzoo.org.uk