London Zoo & Snowdon Aviary: The Waterside Menagerie
Why is it significant?
Look across the water to your left at that futuristic web of tensioned aluminium cables and soaring tetrahedral peaks rising above the canal cutting. You are walking right through the northern flank of ZSL London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, opened in eighteen twenty-eight.
Key Facts
| Place | London Zoo & Snowdon Aviary: The Waterside Menagerie |
|---|---|
| Address | Outer Circle, Regent's Park, London NW1 4RY |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.53580, -0.15540 |
| Part of Walk | Regent's Canal: Floating Cafes, Waterways & Camden Lock |
| Generated | Generated |
Look across the water to your left at that futuristic web of tensioned aluminium cables and soaring tetrahedral peaks rising above the canal cutting. You are walking right through the northern flank of ZSL London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, opened in eighteen twenty-eight. This dramatic skeletal structure is the Snowdon Aviary, completed in nineteen sixty-five by Antony Armstrong-Jones, the Earl of Snowdon, and structural engineer Cedric Price.
Why does the canal cut directly through the middle of the zoo grounds? When John Nash planned Regent's Park in eighteen eleven, the wealthy aristocratic residents of the surrounding villas refused to look at dirty commercial coal barges drifting past their parlours. They forced Nash to dig the canal deep into a sunken trench at the outer boundary. Decades later, when the Zoological Society expanded, the zoo simply bridged the canal and kept animals on both banks.
The aviary was a radical engineering breakthrough: it was Britain's very first tensile structure to use pre-stressed aluminium and steel mesh, allowing free-flight space without massive internal pillars. Today, the structure has been reborn as Monkey Valley, housing a bustling troop of black-and-white colobus monkeys.
Listen carefully as you stroll beneath the overhanging willow branches: between the splash of canal boat rudders, you might hear the booming roar of an Asiatic lion or the trumpet of gibbons echoing through the trees, a surreal African soundtrack in the very heart of urban London.