Chester Zoo

Chester Zoo is a zoological garden at Upton-by-Chester, in Cheshire, England. It was opened in 1931 by George Mottershead and his family, who used as a basis some animals from an earlier zoo in Shavington. It is one of the UK's largest zoos at 111 acres (45 ha). The zoo has a total land holding of approximately 400 acres.

George Mottershead (1894-1978)
George Mottershead was born in Sale Moor, Manchester on 12th June 1894. His father Albert Mottershead was a botanist and nurseryman.

Early Life
Mottershead was taken to Belle Vue Zoological Gardens in Manchester in 1903 as a childhood treat after the end of the Second Boer War. He apparently disliked seeing the animals confined in cages, and was determined to create a zoo without bars. Although these ideas may have come later the story of his sight as a child of a miserable-looking elephant confined behind bars is frequently repeated.

As a youth, he experimented with aviaries, and tanks and runs for pet lizards and snakes. He left home aged 16 to become a fitness instructor. After the outbreak of the First World War, George Mottershead joined the South Lancashire Regiment. In October 1916, at the Battle of the Somme, Mottershead suffered a bullet wound to his neck, injuring his spine. He was initially paralysed, and recuperated at Highfield Military Hospital in Knotty Ash. Contrary to the expected medical prognosis he eventually recovered the ability to walk (with a limp) after three years in a wheelchair. His brothers, Albert and Stanley Mottershead, were killed in the war. Mottershead had had his Army Disabilty Pension stopped in 1919 after the Army discovered that he was now able to walk again.

Shavington
With his parents and young family, Mottershead moved to Shavington (Crewe) in around 1920, and operated a successful market garden and florist/produce shop. Sources vary on how the move was funded: some sources suggest that his father owned the market garden and some suggest that his father loaned the money to purchase it. Mottershead originally sold his produce through markets, but then purchased a shop. Later (by 1924) started selling pet birds from a further shop he purchased next door. The smallholding that he ran in Shavington was called "Oakfield", which appears to have been just an amazing coincidence given the later location of Chester Zoo.

The pet shop went bust during the miners strike of 1926 leaving the family in a difficult financial position. To improve their situation the Mottersheads converted the market-garden into a "zoo" to show his stock of birds and his private collection of animals to the paying public. The tomato house was used for birds and animals and the henhouse became a Monkey House. It was an instant success: adults were charged 6d and children under 12 half price. The Monkey House contained at least 12 different varieties within it. Other animals at Oakfield were Porcupine, Canadian Black Bears, a Chimpanzee and a Polar Bear.

Money was always a problem and a partnership was formed with Dr William (Willie) English who was a member of the Royal Zoological Society. Arguments over management followed and in 1930 Mottershead left. English kept all the animals and continued the zoo at Shavington for a short while.

Oakfield
The Mottershead family moved to the Oakfield Estate in Upton by Chester in December 1930, paying £3,500 for a 9 acres (3.6 ha) site including Oakfield Manor, built around 1885 for Benjamin Chafers Roberts and now a Grade II listed building. Oakfield was designed by the architect Edward Augustus Lyle Ould (1852–1909), a pupil of John Douglas and the designer of several other similar-styled buildings in Chester.

The family acquired two Himalayan black bears from a wildlife park in Matlock, and added monkeys, chimpanzees, birds, and reptiles.

The Local Opposition
The opening of the zoo was not without difficulty.

The later zoo
A private company, Chester Zoological Gardens Limited, governed the zoo from 1932. until 1934, when it was replaced by the North of England Zoological Society Limited, with a council chaired by Richard Blair Young. Mottershead served as director-secretary, his wife, Elizabeth, as catering manager, his father, Albert, as head gardener, and his older daughter, Muriel, as assistant curator. His school-age daughter, June, later proved to have a special interest in fish, perhaps promoted when an aquarium with six cold-water tanks was built in the basement of the Oakfield. Geraldine Russell Alien, who later chaired the zoo council, sponsored the aquarium, and Lady Daresbury opened it in 1934. That same year, the zoo remodeled the monkey house, added parrot aviaries and a penguin pool, and recorded its first successful hatching of a black-footed penguin chick. Visitors, however, were few, and financial success still eluded the zoo, which solicited help from benefactors. Esther Holt presented the zoo with her collection of tropical birds and also paid for their upkeep. The Holt family, which ran a shipping company on Merseyside, donated many other animals, including mandrills and chimpanzees from West Africa. The fifth Duke of Westminster presented the zoo with a capybara. The zoo also acquired an additional 14 acres (six hectares) of land around this time.

Sources and Links

 * Zoo website;
 * Upton History Group: on the zoo;