It's Dudley Zoo, not the best zoo in the world I have to admit, they're pretty much hemmed in & unable to expand, the polar bears and elephants have now gone. Years ago they had an orca in an unbelievably small pool, sadly it didn't live for long. The castle has played host to archers and dark ages re-enactors, there was once a 15 inch gauge miniature railway in the grounds, if you want to include a film crew, some of the TV series "one by one" was filmed there. The carpark and scrubland to one side of the zoo has played host to a travelling fair and the circus, when the circus was in town nobody living near the zoo got much sleep, both sets of animals having a howl & growl session at eachother long into the night. Birdwatchers in the woods to the rear of the zoo got a surprise one Sunday when a penguin came waddling down the track, a warthog managed to get loose in the zoo grounds, a local policeman got a surprise early one morning when he came face to face with a camel in the marketplace, a Marabou Stork got loose while having its wings clipped and managed to land on the roof of the hospital, a bird well over 4 feet tall with a beak like a pair of garden shears, the hospital porters decided to capture it & it cornered 3 of them! When they had the dino exhibit somebody stole one of the caveman figures and put it in the old mineworkings under the castle, guess who just happened to be amongst the group of people exploring the workings and came face to face with the "caveman"
According to the old crews from the fire station a baboon escaped one morning, came down the back driveway, across the road and up Tower Street, it came through the fire station yard and went into the back of the police station, they say it caused all sorts of trouble, it'd passed it's sergeants exam before anybody noticed
The castle owes its ruin status as much to a fire and victorian vandals as to the English Civil War. Given some thought a lot of themes could be worked in around it, the main problems as always being time and available space to set it up (not to mention the finance for it all) but from what we've seen so far you're more than inventive enough to work it all out, still going back and looking at the pics over & over again. Well done !
