An auction of 300 items from the site of Bristol Zoo in Clifton has stunned zoo bosses after netting more than £160,000 for the zoo’s new site on the edge of the city.
Everything from sculptures, statues and ornaments from the famous Zoo Gardens to the signs, paintings, historic crockery and even the Victorian railings, went under the hammer in an online auction that attracted bids from around the world.
Items consistently went for between five and ten times more than their pre-sale auctioneer’s estimate, with small items initially listed for around £50 selling for hundreds of pounds. Many items were sold for thousands of pounds, including the original carved stone bust of the iconic Bristol Zoo gorilla Alfred, which sold for £9,000. Another lot, a well-known half-gorilla statue that was originally situated near the main Gorilla Island viewing platform, had been listed for between £150 and £250 but sold for £2,200, while a life-size fibreglass sculpture of a sitting gorilla sold for £1,500.
The final total from the sale has not yet been confirmed by Bristol Zoo Gardens, but Bristol Live estimates it to be £162,210. A second auction is to take place on Monday of more than 40 mid-Victorian benches from the gardens themselves, that could bring in another six-figure sum.
The sale has been controversial, however. A group of shareholders of the Bristol Zoological Society, led by Tom Jones from the Save Bristol Zoo campaign, tried to stop the auction going ahead this week with two separate lawyer’s letters warning of legal action.
The campaign group say the auctions of items from the zoo are premature because the future of the zoo site is still up in the air due to a judicial review being brought against the city council over the permission given to build around 200 new flats on the site.
Zoo bosses said they were not going to ‘give in to pressure’ from what they dismissed as a ‘small well-funded group of campaigners’, and pressed on with the sale, with the money raised going to the Zoological Society’s plans to expand and enhance the Bristol Zoo Project site at Easter Compton, near Cribbs Causeway on the edge of Bristol.
The zoo in Clifton closed in 2022 after 186 years of being based at the iconic gardens, and now almost the entire collection of signs, fences, seats, tables, paintings and a range of other items that were once part of the zoo, has been auctioned off in a mammoth sale of 300 lots.
The most expensive lot sold was an Edwardian yellow enamel advertising sign which is thought to have once been at Temple Meads station, directing arriving passengers to catch a train to Clifton Down Station to visit the zoo. It was listed for sale for an estimate of between £3,000 and £5,000 but after fierce bidding, sold eventually for £16,000.
Those prices way over the estimated price were consistent across large and small items. A zoo sign that adorned the entrance path was estimated at between £400 and £600 but sold in the end for £3,100, while two small red signs, which measure just 12cm by 22cm warning people ‘Danger these animals bite’ and ‘Do not throw anything into this enclosure’ had been thought would fetch around £50 but sold for £300 instead, as bidders on the internet pushed prices up in their clamour to buy the items.
One of the quirkiest things sold was a giant tortoise-shaped bed or bench that had acted as an incubator for baby tortoises – it sold for £380 – while a Jason Lane original sculpture that was in a pond outside the Bug World enclosure and featured birds that nod their heads when people tossed coins into a bowl between them, sold for £3,100 – more than five times the expected price.
Two pairs of snake-design door handles from either entrances to the reptile house had been estimated to fetch between £80 and £120, but sold for an astonishing £1,400 and £1,000, while
The final lot of what Andrew Stone from Auctioneum described as ‘a momentous sale’ was a unique original 1950s advertising sign featuring an elephant on the phone saying ‘When are you coming to see us?’ It was listed with an estimate of £300-£500 but sold in the end for £3,500.
“This has been an amazing day. Bristol you’ve done us proud, thank you. If you’ve ever been to the zoo and have a memory of Bristol Zoo, I hope you’ve got something to take away with you,” he added. “I hope so much good comes from the money.”