offer of a country house with zoo attached seemed even better – if we could get it, which seemed unlikely. And if there was nothing wrong with it, which also seemed unlikely. There must be some serious structural problems in the house, or the grounds or enclosures, or some fundamental flaw with the business which was impossible to rectify. But even with this near certainty of eventual failure, the entire family was sufficiently intrigued to investigate further. A flight of fancy? Perhaps so, but it was one for which, we decided, we could restructure our entire lives.
My father, Ben Harry Mee, had died a few months before, and mum was going to have to sell the family home where they had lived for the last twenty years, a five-bedroom house in Surrey set in two acres which had just been valued at £1.2 million. This astonishing amount simply reflected the pleasant surroundings, but most importantly, its proximity to London, comfortably within the economic security cordon of the M25. Twenty-five minutes by train from London Bridge, this was the stockbroker belt, an enviable position on the property ladder achieved by my father, who, as the son of an enlightened Doncaster miner, had worked hard and invested shrewdly on behalf of his offspring all his life.
Ben did in fact work at the stock exchange for the last 15 years of his career, but not as a broker, a position which he felt could be morally dubious. Dad was Administration Controller, running the admin for the London Stock Exchange, and for the exchanges in Manchester, Dublin and Liverpool, plus a total of 11 regional and Irish amalgamated buildings. (At a similar stage in my life I was having trouble running the admin of a single self-employed journalist.) So as a family we were relatively well off, though not actually rich, and with no liquid assets to support any whimsical ventures. In 2005, the Halifax estimated that there were 67,000 such properties valued over £1,000,000 in the UK, but we seemed to be the only family who decided to cash it all in and a have a crack at buying a zoo.
It seemed like a lost cause from the beginning, but one which we knew we’d regret if we didn’t pursue. We had a plan, of sorts. Mum had been going to sell the house and downsize to something smaller and more manageable like a two- or three-bedroom cottage, then live in peace and security with a buffer of cash, but with space for only one or two offspring to visit with their various broods, at any time. The problem was, and what we all worried about, was that this isolation in old age could be the waiting room for a gradual deterioration (and, as she saw it, inevitable dementia), and death.
The new plan was to upsize the family assets and mum’s home to a 12-bedroom house surrounded by a stagnated business about which we knew nothing, but I would abandon France altogether and put my book on hold, Duncan would stop working in London, and we would then live together and run the zoo full time. Mum would be spared the daily concerns of running the zoo, but would benefit from the stimulating environment and having her family around in an exciting new life looking after 200 exotic animals. What could possibly go wrong? Come on mum … it’ll be fine.
In fact, it was a surprisingly easy sell. Mum has always been adventurous, and she likes big cats. When she was 73 I took her to a lion sanctuary where you could walk in the bush with lions, and stroke them in their enclosures, many captive bred, descended from lions rescued from being shot by farmers. I was awestruck by the lions’ size and frankly terrified, never quite able to let go of the idea that I wasn’t meant to be this close to these predators. Every whisker twitch triggered in me a jolt of adrenaline which was translated into an involuntary spasming flinch. Mum just tickled them under the chin and said, ‘Ooh, aren’t they lovely?’ The next year this adventurous lady tried skiing for the first time. So the concept of buying a zoo was not immediately dismissed out of hand.
None of us liked the idea of mum being on her own, so we were already looking at her living with one or other of us, perhaps in a larger property with pooled resources. Which is how the details of Dartmoor Wildlife Park, courtesy of Knight Frank, a normal residential estate agents in the south of England, happened to drop through mum’s letterbox. My sister Melissa was the most excited, ordering several copies of the details and sending them out to all her four brothers: the oldest Vincent, Henry, Duncan and myself. I was in France, and received my copy with the ‘Your dream scenario’ note. I had to admit it looked good, but quickly tossed it onto my teetering, soon-to-be-sorted pile. This was already carpeted in dust from the Mistral, that magnificent southern French wind which periodically blasts down the channel in south-west France created by the mountains surrounding the rivers Rhone and Soane. And then it comes right through the ancient lime mortar of my north-facing barn-office wall, redistributing the powdery mortar as a minor sandstorm of dust evenly scattered throughout the office over a period of about four days at a time. Small rippled dunes of mortar-dust appeared on top of the brochure, then other documents appeared on top of the dunes, and then more small dunes.
But Melissa wouldn’t let it lie. She wouldn’t let it lie because she thought it was possible, and had her house valued, and kept dragging any conversation you had with her back to the zoo. Duncan was quickly enthused. Having spent a short stint as a reptile keeper at London Zoo, he was the closest thing we had to a zoo professional. Now an experienced business manager in London, he was also the prime candidate for overall manager of the project, if he, and almost certainly others, chose to trade their present lifestyles for an entirely different existence.
Melissa set up a viewing for the family, minus Henry and Vincent, who had other engagements but were in favour of exploration. So it was agreed, and ‘Grandma’ Amelia, and a good proportion of her brood over three generations, arrived in a small country hotel in the South Hams district of Devon. There was a wedding going on, steeping the place in bonhomie, and the gardens, chilly in the early spring night air, occasionally echoed to stilettos on gravel as underdressed young ladies hurried to their hatchbacks and back for some essential commodity missing from the revelry inside.
A full, or even reasonably comprehensive, family gathering outside Christmas or a wedding was getting unusual, and we were on a minor mission rather than a holiday, yet accompanied by a gaggle of children of assorted ages. Our party was definitely towards the comprehensive end of the spectrum, with all that that entails. Vomiting babies, pregnant people, toddlers at Head Smash age and children accidentally ripping curtains from the wall trying to impersonate Darth Vader. The night before the viewing, we were upbeat, but realistic. We were serious contenders, but probably all convinced that we were giving it our best shot and that somebody with more money, or experience, or probably both, would come along and take it away.
We arrived at the park on a crisp April morning in 2005, and met Ellis Daw for the first time. An energetic man in his late seventies with a full white beard, and a beanie hat which he never removed, Ellis took us round the park and the house like a pro on autopilot. He’d clearly done this tour a few times before. On our quick trip around the labyrinthine 13-bedroom mansion, we took in that the sitting room was half full of parrot cages, the general decor had about three decades of catching up to do, and the plumbing and electrics looked like they could absorb a few tens of thousands of pounds to put right.
Out in the park we were all blown away by the animals, and Ellis’s innovative enclosure designs. Tiger Mountain, so called because three Siberian tigers prowl around a manmade mountain at the centre of the park, was particularly impressive. Instead of chain link or wire mesh, Ellis had adopted a ha-ha system, which basically entails a deep ditch around the inside of the perimeter, surrounded by a wall more than six feet high on the animal side, but only three or four feet on the visitor side. This creates the impression of extreme proximity to these most spectacular cats, who pad about the enclosure like massive flame-clad versions of the domestic moggies we all know and love, making you completely reappraise your relationship with the diminutive predators many of us shelter indoors.
There were lions, behind wire, but as stunning as the tigers, roaring in defiance of any other animal to challenge them for their territory, particularly other lions, apparently. And it has to be said that these bellowing outputs, projected by their hugely powerful diaphragms for a good three miles across the valley, have over the years proved 100 per cent effective. Never once has this group of lions been challenged by any other group of lions, or anything else, for their turf. It’s easy to argue that this is due to lack of predators of this magnitude in the vicinity, but one lioness did apparently catch a heron at a reputed 15 feet off the ground a few years before, confirming that this territorial defensiveness