The story behind Hertfordshire Zoo...

I always feel if those visitors come and they enjoy their day and they've got children and the children enjoy their day and make them go away until other people. Brilliant. Yeah that's lovely. My name is Peter Sampson. I should do anything and everything. The zoo bit was interesting because you know what did we know about zoos? We just about spell it. Yeah going back to the early days and this is before there was a Paradise Wildlife Park and we were running a pretty large bus coach and travel business which we started from scratch with one coach. We had something like five depots, three travel shops, an MOT testing station, big workshops for our buses and coaches and a big fleet of 70 buses, 120 staff. But it started to get difficult to make ends meet financially. The costs were expanding and we thought perhaps we'll try and get out of buses and coaches which was difficult, took us several years and we're getting to looking at other people buying land and possibly building houses seemed the way forward. So that was the first indication of where do we go. I had a friend called Peter Fitz who owned this site and he got into financial difficulties. He said to me would I be interested in buying this site and I thought yeah I could do as he said. He was desperate to sell. We had nine enforcement orders on the site for tipping and rubbish and all sorts of things. He had a few animals. He agreed that as long as I paid him a substantial deposit I could pay him so much a month for the next four or five years whatever it was. So that's how we arrived on the site of what is now Hampshire Zoo. Well Broxbourne Zoo, as I said, Peter Fitz, he'd been, he was trying to raise money, he was letting people tip and there were loads of rubbish and he had a tyre dump. You name it. It was pretty disastrous. The buildings were run down, all the enclosures were run down and it was about the time when the zoo licensing had come out. We'd have people outside the front gates with banners saying close it. We hadn't even opened it properly but close it down, you know, the animals are not looked after properly and there was a lot of truth in that. I wouldn't say so much when we started to do things but certainly just prior to us. So it was difficult. In what had gone on, you know, in the zoo world, it was described as the worst zoo in the UK. We decided, yeah, let's try and become a zoo. Let's try and gradually sell the business and that's how it first started. So on very, very, very limited funds we made a start. What did I know about animals, especially wild animals? I knew nothing but there was a lion here called Bobby. He had a very small enclosure, not much bigger than this room that we're now sitting in, you know, covered in an old tilt and the poor old lion looked really distressed and upset and there was only one person here at the time and her name was Yvonne. She was more or less looking after what few animals there were and I think Bobby gave us that inspiration. We looked at him, he looked sad and forlorn and we thought, well, if we're going to become a zoo, let's try and make sure Bobby has a decent life. To be fair, we'd made a start on Bobby's enclosure, irrespective of whether he'd got a zoo license or not, but at the time, you know, I was the welder and we had other people doing concrete in, the sons and their friends, other people, some of them too at the second hand. All the posts were on telegraph poles, you know, we knew we wanted to do it. People were getting stuck in, it had been raining and freezing cold and muggy, but we didn't care. I was all happy and I think the day still, I can still conjure up that day, which is 40 odd years ago almost now, when we first let Bobby run out on grass, you know, he'd never been on grass in his life and that sort of amount of pleasure, you know, and I think, as you know, with Cam, what's going on in, at the big gas hatch recently, with a lion that never run on grass before, it was almost repeating what happened 40 odd years ago, so I think it's all, it's nothing to do with money, it's nothing to do with anything like that, it's just that lovely experience of knowing you've helped an animal in distress really. How's that then Bobby? Is that a good place for a Bobby boy? Try and wake up every day, if you've got to go to work, look forward to it. Try and do your best, try and be as happy as you can, I know it's not, it's always difficult to help a single thing and things going around us, but that's how I would judge life. Try and enjoy every day, have a few friends, enjoy your friends, enjoy what you've got around you. Keep happy, keep smart.