This will be the penultimate post of this short run. What would a walk around Hull’s Zoological Gardens have been like c.1850?
Entering the main gate off Spring Bank (bottom centre) we would pass the Superintendent’s Lodge, having paid our entrance fee somehow, ahead was the circular Refreshment Room but any lingering here would be postponed until the end of the walk. To our right a sheet of water labelled Fireworks Lake, but as fireworks and wildlife are unhappy bed-fellows we would walk on past the Music Hall (as any performance in progress would be far too expensive), past a hexagonal enclosure of unclear purpose and on to a set of small enclosures separated by trees trees and edged by a circular path. The central round cage housed the ‘Bearpit’, nearby enclosures housing ‘Greenland dogs’, wolves and a type of fox. The fact that any viciousness displayed was a result of being confined to small, sterile enclosures would occur to us but we wouldn’t say anything, after all a killer instinct was inevitable in these ‘exotic’ species. Walking on on paths between trees we wolf come to a small lake in the north-east corner of the site and soon after the Monkey House. Soon after we would come to the six cages collectively called the Menagerie and in the north-west corner the Bird House and the octagonal Eagle House. Walking south we would come to the Camera Obscura – a term used since the 16th century to define a windowless building into which a ‘pinhole’ beam of light shed an inverted image of the point that the beam came from onto a whitewashed wall, in some a lens was placed in the pinhole. Some camera obscura were portable and in some the lens section could be rotated to vary the image. There was one in Whitby (not sure if still used) and one in the Museum Gardens, York which seems permanently locked up – Passing the Goose Lake with its two islands, crucial to the comfort and safety of the geese, we would come to the pheasantry, passed a sculpture and another Wolf Den before reaching the exit gate to Spring Bank. ‘One day’ father said ‘we shall have the vote and these animals will be free’. He was half right. But then again he was given to ridiculous predictions, ‘One day’ he said ‘everyone will have a camera obscura in their pocket’.