We shall be pleased to accept the polecat

We are still adding to our collection of material about Belle Vue Zoo and Pleasure Gardens. Until this remarkable and well-loved establishment closed in the 1970s, it was Manchester’s principal centre of entertainment, attracting numerous stars of screen and vinyl as well as new recruits to the Zoological Gardens, as this letter from 1930 shows. Quite what Miss A.T. Davies of The Bungalow was doing with a polecat we shall perhaps never know, but it is reassuring to know that he or she went to a good home.

We are always interested in receiving additional items relating to Belle Vue or the Jennison family, so do please get in touch if you have anything that, like the polecat, could do with some ‘care and attention’.