London Zoo

The society, and what it is for

The Zoological Society of London was founded on 29 April 1826. Its gardens in Regent's Park opened in April 1828, but only to Fellows of the society and their guests; the general public were not admitted without a Fellow's order until 1847. The distinction matters, because it explains what the place was built as — a collection assembled for the study of animals, which happened to be looked at, rather than an attraction that happened to hold animals.

The society is a charity whose chartered purpose is the advancement of zoology. Besides the two zoos it runs the Institute of Zoology, its research arm, affiliated with University College London since 2011; it keeps field offices in several countries, works on wildlife health and disease surveillance, conservation breeding and reintroduction, and runs the EDGE of Existence programme for species that are both evolutionarily distinctive and severely threatened. It publishes several zoological journals, the oldest descending from Proceedings begun in 1830. It is written as ZSL, and the two zoos are now styled simply London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo, having for some years carried the ZSL prefix.

Burton's zoo

Decimus Burton laid out the original grounds and designed the first animal houses. Little of that work survives. The giraffe house of the 1830s does, and still holds giraffes, which makes it one of the oldest animal buildings anywhere in continuous use for its original purpose. The clock tower of about 1830 stands, in use as a first-aid point. So do a raven cage, a tunnel under the Outer Circle and one of the footbridges. Of the great Victorian animal houses, the second reptile house of 1882–83 survives because it was restored and reopened in 2008 as a bird house, the Blackburn Pavilion.

Twentieth-century architecture, and what it holds now

The zoo's architectural reputation rests on four twentieth-century buildings, and not one of them is used as intended.

Lubetkin and Tecton's gorilla house of 1932–33, engineered with Ove Arup, is listed Grade I. It is known as the Round House, which is what the society and the listing authorities both call it, and has housed aye-ayes and fruit bats; the society has said it is no longer considered appropriate for larger animals.

The same partnership's penguin pool of 1934 is also Grade I, and is the more famous of the two — an interlocking pair of concrete ramps over an oval basin. It stopped holding penguins in 2004, after foot infections were linked to a floor surface laid during a restoration in the late 1980s. Alligators were tried in it, and porcupines lived there for some years, but it has held no animals since about 2009 and now stands empty.

The Snowdon Aviary, designed by Lord Snowdon with Cedric Price and the engineer Frank Newby, was erected between 1962 and 1965 and opened in 1965 — not 1964, as is often printed. It was Britain's first walk-through aviary and is listed Grade II*. It no longer holds birds. Restored with a grant of more than £4 million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, it reopened on 15 August 2022 as Monkey Valley, a walk-through enclosure for eastern black-and-white colobus. Any account of strolling through it past hornbills and waterfowl describes the building as it was before that date.

The elephant and rhinoceros pavilion by Hugh Casson and Neville Conder, built between 1962 and 1965, is listed Grade II*. Its elephants left for Whipsnade in 2001, after a keeper was killed, ending more than a century and a half of elephant-keeping in Regent's Park.

Across the site there are two Grade I structures, two at Grade II* and roughly ten at Grade II, and the whole of Regent's Park — the zoological gardens included — is registered Grade I as a historic park.

The aquarium, 1853 to 2019

The zoo's aquarium history is longer than the building most visitors remember. A Fish House opened in 1853 and is generally reckoned the first public aquarium anywhere; the word aquarium came into general use from it.

The aquarium that people recall was part of the Mappin scheme. The Mappin Terraces of 1913–14, by Belcher and Joass, are an artificial range of hollow concrete hills, listed Grade II, built for deer, bears and waterfowl rather than for bears alone, and the hollows held the water tanks. An aquarium was in the design from the outset but the First World War and a shortage of money delayed it by about a decade; George V and Queen Mary opened it in 1924.

It closed on 22 October 2019 and will not reopen. The building, then ninety-five years old, was found to be in poor condition, with concrete coming away from the ceiling; much of the freshwater collection went to Whipsnade. The society describes the structure as retired from active use, and a mural has since been painted on it. Older accounts that place an aquarium under the terraces are describing something that no longer exists.

The reptile house

The reptile house of 1926, by Sir Edward Guy Dawber working to a design by Joan Beauchamp Procter, closed to the public in 2023. Procter was the society's own curator of reptiles and designed the building around the animals rather than the visitors, which was unusual for its date. A purpose-built replacement, Secret Life of Reptiles and Amphibians, opened a short distance away on 29 March 2024. The original house still stands; what it will be used for has not been announced.

What is there now

The enclosures a visitor actually walks through are mostly of this century. Into Africa and Butterfly Paradise both date from 2006, Gorilla Kingdom from March 2007, and the Clore Rainforest Lookout from the same year, with Rainforest Life and a nocturnal section added in 2010. Penguin Beach opened in May 2011, Tiger Territory in March 2013, In with the Lemurs in 2015 and Land of the Lions in March 2016, built around lion terraces of 1975. The Millennium Conservation Centre of 1997–99 has changed its exhibit twice: it opened as Web of Life in June 1999, became B.U.G.S! in 2003 and reopened as Tiny Giants in 2021. The squirrel monkey walk-through completed in 2005 survives under a new name, In with the Monkeys.

Animal adoptions are not a recent innovation, whatever older accounts suggest: the society has sold them since 1982, alongside its long-standing membership tiers. The packages themselves change from year to year.

Whipsnade

The society bought a farm on the Dunstable Downs in Bedfordshire in December 1926 and opened it in 1931 as the first open zoological park of its kind, where animals were kept in paddocks rather than cages. At about 600 acres it is far larger than Regent's Park and takes the species that need the room — the elephants among them. No reliable source gives its distance from London, and the figures in circulation disagree, so none is quoted.

The site and the lease

The land is Crown land, let to the society, with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport as landlord. The surrounding park is managed by The Royal Parks; the zoo's own ground is let directly to the society and is not under that management. The current lease was renewed in 2021 and runs to 2081, sixty years being the longest term the Crown Estate Act 1961 then allowed. The Zoological Society of London (Leases) Act 2024, dated 24 May 2024 and in force from that July, raised the permitted maximum to a hundred and fifty years. It does not grant a longer lease — it only makes one possible, and there is no published confirmation that one has been agreed.

In April 2026, alongside its bicentenary, the society announced a wildlife health centre for the Regent's Park site, funded by an anonymous gift of £20 million described as the largest in its history and intended to combine clinical care, teaching and wildlife disease research. Neither its location on the site nor an opening date has been published.

Getting there

Camden Town on the Northern line is the nearest Underground station, at about sixteen minutes on foot rather than the ten often quoted. Chalk Farm is a little further, Camden Road on the Overground further still, and Regent's Park station, despite the name, is the furthest of the lot at well over twenty minutes. One bus route stops at the zoo itself, on Prince Albert Road.

The Regent's Canal runs through the grounds, and the towpath walk between Little Venice and Camden passes the giraffe house and the aviary, which can be seen from the water. The canal boats do not stop at the zoo: their operator says so plainly and directs passengers to Camden Market instead, a walk of about a quarter of an hour. Accounts of a boat service landing inside the gates are out of date.