Zoo Memories Trail: Cottage Aviary • Paignton Zoo

Almost as it was

The Cottage Aviary and Reptile Nursery are two of the few remaining original zoo buildings, and both feature in the first edition of the zoo guide book from 1930. The Cottage Aviary has always been an aviary, but the building next to it has had numerous inhabitants, from chimps, to parrots, to condors, to macaques. Most recently it housed Reptile Nursery, and it is still used today to provide an off-show breeding area for some of our endangered reptiles and amphibians. Aviaries extended from behind the Cottage Aviary to create a bird-filled walkway that led to the old Tropical House.

cottage aviary 1931 — ^{The Cottage Aviary (left) and Reptile Nursery (right) still stand today.}

parrot house 1931 — ^{In the 1930s the parrot collection here at Paignton was very large, although the living conditions for the birds in the Parrot House were somewhat different to today!}

old aviaries — ^{The original aviaries in this area housed a variety of bird species.}

aviaries — ^{Aviaries sloped behind Cottage Aviary and Reptile Nursery towards the old Tropical House.}

birds of prey behind cottag aviary — ^{The original aviaries behind Cottage Aviary.}

^{Although the Cottage Aviary has always been an aviary, the building next door has had many uses. By the 1970s it was serving as a TV Studio (no. 29 on this map), but in the decades before it had been used for parrots (1930s), chimpanzees (1950s) and rhesus macaques (1960s).}