Whipsnade Zoo

Stand still for a moment and feel the wind. Up here on the edge of the Chiltern Hills, it rarely stops. It moves across short, springy grass and carries the smell of hay, damp earth and, now and then, something much wilder. Somewhere nearby a peacock screams. Beneath your feet, just under the thin soil, lies white chalk. That chalk is the reason this place looks the way it does.

You are standing in Whipsnade Zoo, a few miles west of Luton, close to the market town of Dunstable. The Zoological Society of London runs it. That is the same scientific society that runs London Zoo in Regent's Park. But this is a very different kind of place. London Zoo is tight and urban. Whipsnade is wide open. It covers around six hundred acres of downland, which makes it the largest zoo in Britain.

That difference was the whole point. In the early twentieth century, the society faced a problem. Its animals in London had very little room, and city air was dirty. The society wanted space where large animals could live in herds and roam. In the late 1920s, it bought a run-down farm on these hills. The new zoo opened to the public in 1931. It was one of the first open zoos in Europe, where animals lived in paddocks rather than cages.

Here is the first thing many visitors miss. Look for the great white lion on the hillside below the zoo. It is a chalk figure, cut into the slope in the 1930s by removing the turf to expose the white rock beneath. On a clear day, people see it from miles away across the vale. England has many old chalk horses and giants. This lion is a much younger relative, made as a giant advertisement for the zoo.

While you walk, you may hear a soft rustle in the grass beside the path. Look down. Whipsnade lets some smaller animals wander freely through the park. Wallabies, small cousins of the kangaroo from Australia, hop between the trees. Chinese water deer, small and shy, graze in the open. These deer have no antlers. The males have long, tusk-like teeth instead, which makes them look a little like small vampires.

That is the second surprise. Some of those deer have escaped over the decades and settled in the English countryside. Today a wild population of Chinese water deer lives in parts of eastern and southern England, and Whipsnade is one of the places it started. So the zoo has shaped the wildlife far beyond its own fences. Not every experiment in a zoo stays inside the zoo.

The size of the park changes how you visit. You do not move from cage to cage here. You walk long paths, or you drive slowly along the roads, past large paddocks. Some animals are close to the fence. Others stand far away on a slope, and you need patience to find them. This is closer to watching wildlife than looking at an exhibit. Bring that patience with you. It pays off.

The herd of Asian elephants is a highlight for many people. Whipsnade has kept elephants for most of its history, and calves have been born here. Elephants are social animals, and the herd lives as a family group. Watch how the adults stand around the younger ones. Watch how they use their trunks to throw dust or grass over their backs. That dust works as sunscreen and keeps away insects.

The zoo has an architectural story too. In the 1930s, the modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin and his firm, called Tecton, designed buildings for the Zoological Society. Modernism was a style of clean concrete shapes and simple lines, and it was very new in Britain at that time. Lubetkin is also known for the famous Penguin Pool at London Zoo. At Whipsnade, his work shows how seriously the society took design and animal care in those early years.

Today, the zoo is not only a place to look at animals. It is also part of a scientific organisation. The Zoological Society of London works on conservation in Britain and around the world. Many animals here belong to breeding programmes for endangered species. These programmes help to keep healthy populations of rare animals in zoos, and sometimes they support the return of animals to the wild.

Take a moment at one of the high points and look outward. The view runs across the Vale of Aylesbury, a wide plain of fields, hedges and small villages. On a windy day, you may see gliders circling silently overhead. The Dunstable Downs nearby are popular with glider pilots, because the wind rises up the steep slope. The sky is busy here, even when the paths are quiet.

Just outside the zoo, the small village of Whipsnade has another curious place. It is called the Tree Cathedral. Here, trees grow in the shape of a cathedral, with avenues of trees for the nave and the chapels. A man planted it in the early twentieth century as a memorial to friends lost in the First World War. The National Trust now looks after it. It is a quiet, green contrast to the noise of the zoo.

Now look around you again. Notice the chalk where the grass is worn thin, white against the green. Notice the wide sky, and the animals far away on the slopes. This hill was a farm once, then a bold experiment. It is still an open space where large animals have room to move. As you walk on, listen. You may hear the wind, the peacocks, and perhaps the low call of an animal you have not seen yet. Take your time. Here, the best moments often come to people who stop and wait.