Plymouth Zoo and Longleat Wildlife park

The film featured in this post is a standard 8 film which was taken partly at Plymouth Zoo and also at Longleat safari park sometime in the late 1960s.

It seems Plymouth Zoo was open between 1962 and 1978 so that dates this film to within those dates, but since there are cars shown in the film with the F suffix to their registration plates the bottom range of dates it could have been taken is 1967.

The film seems quite good technical quality((Possibly because it was taken in good light - this will allow the camera to use a smaller aperture and faster shutter speed which helps with focus and motion blur. )) although the focus has wandered on a couple of the shots, especially those of animals in cages.

Plymouth Zoo, Carnival and Longleat film

The film of Plymouth Zoo is actually quite short - only about a minute - and features a few sequences which cover a several different animals; penguins, paraquettes, monkeys, white mice and rabbits for example.

The focus of the film then moves to a carnival or parade although I don't know where this was taken. It's possible that the photographer, who lived in Maidenhead, filmed this locally to themselves, or that it was taken on a holiday or visit to another town.

The final scenes make up the second half of the film and are taken in what I'm pretty sure is Longleat Safari park which opened in 1966. I've googled some images of giraffes at Longleat, and the building which appears in the film is also shown in the images of giraffes so I'm fairly certain that is the location.

This part of the film not only shows various animals in the park, but also has an interesting line up of 1960s cars and some footage of the photographers family.