Extremely hard work for the family and the few staff particularly during the deprivations of the second world war, life became easier once the zoo became the North England Zoological Society with adopters and sponsors. It was a huge and risky family undertaking, desperately underfunded for years until the local gentry realised that the zoo was a serious zoological proposition not just a circus show. June, now in her eighties, is the guardian of her family's legacy and here in Our Zoo, she tellsĪ fascinating account of Chester Zoo between its founding by her father George Mottershead and her marriage to the Head Keeper Fred Williams in 1950. Despite rationing the animals had to be fed and all of them - penguins, elephants, leopards, tigers, lions, kangaroos and polar bears - needed to be moved into secure locked quarters inside as soon as the air raid siren sounded. Keeping the zoo running while the war waged was no easy task. She was 13 when war was declared on 1939 and, with the backbone of the staff headed for the front, it fell to June to take over as head keeper. June soon became the poster girl for Chester Zoo and photographs of her cuddling lion clubs, head-butting a goat or opening the beak of a pelican soon graced the front pages of British newspapers. Her closest companion was an orphaned chimpanzee which her sister hadshe hand reared, and for six years the two were inseparable. With no other children around to play with - her sister Muriel was 10 years older - June's friends became the animals. June Mottorshead was four years old when her father, George, moved his family to Upton, two miles out Chester, to begin the process of turning his dream into a reality.

Unlike other zoos that owe their existence to philanthropists, explorers or big game hunters, Chester Zoo was the brainchild of one working-class man with a dream he had nurtured since he was a boy: to build a zoo without bars. Until I brought friends back from school I didn't realise that most people didn't have baby lions in their bedrooms when they were sick, or bring parrots into the house so they wouldn't catch cold.'Ĭhester Zoo is counted among the top 10 zoos in the world and, with over 11,000 animals and 400 species, it is the most visited wildlife attraction in Britain.

Our Zoo by June Mottershead