From the lions relaxing to giraffes

Enjoy this rare cine footage of Lambton Lion Park in the 1970s.

This one minute-long clip comes to the Sunderland Echo courtesy of the fantastic North East Film Archive and it shows everything from the lions relaxing to giraffes.

Fantastic 1972 film footage from Lambton Lion Park. | North East Film Archive

placeholder image — Fantastic 1972 film footage from Lambton Lion Park. | North East Film Archive

The footage was part of a longer 24-minute film from the NEFA archives and was originally recorded as a Tyne Tees Television produced travelogue in 1972.

It stars actors Charlotte Allen and Kenneth Cope, of Carry On film, Coronation Street and Randall and Hopkirk Deceased TV series fame, travelling around County Durham and exploring what the county has to offer.

Kenneth played the union character Vic Spanner in Carry On At Your Convenience in 1971. Vic was a union shop steward at the W.C. Boggs & Son ceramic toilet and bathroom fitting factory.

Kenneth Cope and Charlotte Allen pictured on their tour of Lambton Lion Park 54 years ago. | North East Film Archive

A year later, he starred in the film at Lambton and, as they drove past the lions, Kenneth comments that one lion seems to be the leader of a wildcat strike.

Lambton Lion Park was opened in July 1972 and permanently closed in 1980

Lambton Lion Park opened in 1972 and attracted visitors for 8 years until its closure. | North East Film Archive

Its short tenure came to an end for economic reasons and after tales of escaped animals including baboons on the A1 and a rhino heading toward Fatfield.

Our thanks go to the excellent North East Film Archive library which has a vast collection of memories on film from the North East and Yorkshire’s history.

Some of the other animals which were residents of the park in 1972. | North East Film Archive

Its team has painstakingly taken on the task of preserving, cataloguing, and digitising these vital collections of reminders of our past.

NEFA officials have previously shared clips of fun at the Seaburn fairground in 1966 and former centre forward Brian Clough in one of his last matches for Sunderland before the injury which put paid to his playing career.

NEFA has a huge catalogue of over 70,000 items of original film, video tape, and born-digital material. Its team painstakingly preserves, catalogues, and digitises these vital collections of reminders of our past.

NEFA operates the The Yorkshire Film Archive in York, and the North East Film Archive, in Middlesbrough. It also has a new rental platform which is available at https://yfanefa.vhx.tv/

If you have cine film memories of Sunderland and County Durham as it looked in years gone by, we would love to hear from you. Email [email protected] and tell us more.