A tale of two lions

I mentioned a few posts ago (here) that I live in Hazlemere in Buckinghamshire, named for its many hazel trees and the moor that used to exist here. I also wrote that there was once a kind of zoo here and that a lion escaped from it. Here's the story ...

Hazlemere is not a big place. It was a small village about 3 miles from nearby High Wycombe until the post-war housing boom. It still maintains a separate identity as a village but Wycombe has grown so much that the outer suburbs are almost joining up with us - all that stops it are some farms and some protected woodlands.

The zoo or, to be strictly accurate, the storage area for the World's Zoological Trading Co Ltd, was build on Hazlemere Park, an area of open grassland and woods. The company specialised in capturing or breeding exotic animals to be sold to rich owners as pets and curiosities, and the 'zoo' was their showroom. Prospective customers could visit to view the goods. But local people visited too, just for the experience.

I have managed to track down a price list for the kinds of animals they had on sale. 

Some of these animals were sold to other zoos and safari parks. Many more were sold as playthings to the idle rich. The owner, big game hunter Robert Leadbetter, claimed that he could get you any animal or bird but they didn't come cheap. An elephant would set you back £800 and a lion £250. To put that into perspective, when this pricelist was published an average house would have cost you around £620 and you could have bought the Bank of England building for £110,000. Interestingly, if the price of food had risen by the same degree that the price of houses have over the past century, a block of butter would now cost you nearly £60. 

I'm not sure how long the zoo was in existence but it was definitely a few decades. That price list - Number 3 - is from 1918 but there was an incident there 15 years earlier, as reported in the London Daily News in 1903: 

THRILLING ADVENTURE AT A PRIVATE ZOO 

Mr Robert Leadbetter, of Hazelmere Park, Buckinghamshire, keeps a private menagerie which on May 7 was the scene of a thrilling incident. After entering the lion's cage while its occupant was imprisoned in his sleeping quarters at the rear, the keeper had come out, closed the door of bars, and pulled the chain that raised the shutter dividing the two compartments. Thereupon the lion - a magnificent brute nine years old – had returned to his cage, and his guardian had passed further up the corridor, to give attention to other beasts. Judge of his horror when, on hearing a noise behind him, he turned to perceive the lion above open his door of bars and himself enter the corridor. The keeper had closed the door but- by an inexplicable and unprecedented oversight – he had forgotten to put on the padlock. 

The poor fellow’s situation was appalling. At his end of the corridor there was no means of exit. Between him and the door opening on to the garden stood the lion, his huge bulk practically filling the narrow passage. The lion looked thoughtfully at the man, apparently in doubt which course to take. Finally, as it seemed, his fancy was pleased by the prospect of liberty, for he walked away down towards the open door. The keeper made the most of his opportunity. Swiftly retracing his footsteps on tip-toe, he slipped into the lion's cage, closed the door after him, and then cried, "Charlie! Charlie!” at the top of his voice. Charlie and other servants working in the proximity ran to the shed and looked in at the window. They gazed upon a bewildering reversal of the appointed order of things, for the man was shut in the lion’s cage and the lion was at liberty in man's domain. 

Subsequent developments deserve to engage the reader's close attention. A number of conditions dove-tail together so nicely and have a mutual relationship so essential to the denouement that they suggest the fancy of a novelist rather than the facts of a journalist. 

The cage the lion had first to pass was that containing a puma and an Indian leopard. The next and last cage, almost facing the open door, contained a great brown bear, measuring nine feet when lying at length. The smaller animals made no demonstration that arrested the attention of the run-away. But with bruin the case was otherwise. He reared up in such a paroxysm of jealous rage, and pawed and growled through the bars with so great a suggestion of menace that the lion stood still. Then he seemed to reconsider his position, and, as the onlookers suggest – to bethink him of his lioness, whom he had not lately seen; for, though her cage was immediately on the right of his, they are separated by a metal partition. Certain it is that he now walked back, passing his own quarters without giving attention to their present human occupant, and pausing in front of his lioness so that the pair of them rubbed noses.

At last the keeper had an unobstructed path to liberty, but on his leaving the cage the lion would be but a yard or two behind him and thus would sudden flight have been attended with too much peril. Presently the lion moved still further along the corridor, as if curious to ascertain who lived in the cage at the end. Its occupants were a full-grown tiger and tigress, who, as soon as they saw the strolling lion, lashed themselves into as great a fury as had seized the bear. And while they fully occupied the lion's attention the man escaped, leaving the door of bars open behind him. The next minute, apparent]y distressed and depressed by the noisy anger of the tigers, the lion walled slowly back, until, on finding his passage barred by his own door, he turned to the right and re-entered his cage. At least, three-fourths of his body had entered when once more he paused. But the keeper and another man darted up the corridor, flung their weight against the door, and so shoved in the remainder of the brute's anatomy. And this time the padlock was not forgotten. 

Again, I have no information about when the zoo ceased trading and 'Hazlemere Park' where it was sited is now under my house and the other houses in my neighbouring streets and cul-de-sacs. Interestingly, one of my friends, photographer Chris Rowan, who lives further along my road did turn up teeth in his garden that were identified as having belonged to a lion. 

Hazlemere Parish Council's office, a lovely old barn, has this old feature from a magazine called The Sphere on its wall to commemorate the spot.

Nearby Wycombe has a famous lion too. 

It stands in the High Street on top of a portico and it's one of the town's better known features.

The portico was built to mark the entrance to the Red Lion Hotel. It appeared sometime between 1772, when William Hannan produced a painting of the western end of the High Street which shows a Red Lion sign but no statue, and 1832 when Disraeli gave his election speech standing next to it. Most likely it was erected by coach-master Charles Tinson who became the landlord in 1776 and announced seven years later that he had refurbished the premises and ‘added several new bedrooms, rebuilt the stables, and made other considerable additions and improvements’ in order to attract as many travellers as possible. 

The statue was made even more famous when Sir Winston Churchill stood next to it on the portico to deliver a rousing post-Second World War speech to the people of High Wycombe in 1945. It's claimed that he tweaked the tail of the lion and it broke off in his hand - the first sign that the old lion was getting fragile. Both Benjamin Disraeli (who lived locally at Hughenden Manor) and Churchill made election speeches from the same spot.

The lion has suffered a few indignities during its long life. In November 1955, after a meal in the hotel, members of High Wycombe Rugby Club climbed onto the portico and painted the lion white. Fortunately the paint washed off easily but it revealed more damage. Therefore, in 1956 a new lion was commissioned and, drawing on the town’s rich furniture and chairmaking history, the job went to local wood-carver and cabinet-maker Frank Hudson. The older statue now resides in the town's museum. 

The Red Lion Inn was demolished in 1961 and a new Woolworth's store built in its place. However, the developers did install a replacement portico and the lion returned to lording it over the shops. Since then it's fallen off once during a storm (1990), lost its tail to vandals (1997) and lost its tail again in 2013. In 2002 it suffered its worst incident when drunken students climbed up onto the portico and toppled the statue. The legs were broken off and the tail shattered. However, on all of these occasions, the lion was repaired by Frank Hudson’s grandson Colin Mantripp, who is himself a master carver.

I'm sure that many more adventures have yet to happen but, hopefully, the lion will remain a feature of the High Street for many more years to come.

As long as people care about these things, that is.