Paultons — the rising star of UK parks
A peculiarity of British theme parks is the fact that they usually started life as something else. Unlike in the US, where many of the biggest parks were purpose built, the majority of British theme parks have smaller, and often more unexpected beginnings.
Chessington World of Adventures, for instance, started life as Chessington Zoo in 1931, and while it still retains a few animal exhibits, they’re commonly seen as mere supplements to the roller coasters and dark rides that dominate the park’s line-up.
It’s worth noting that the zoo, and the theme park that sprang from it, were built in the grounds of the old Burnt Stub mansion — an aristocratic manor house with a history stretching back to the 14th century, whose owner, Sir Francis Barker, decided to sell up. The animal exhibits and an attendant circus moved into the grounds, and the mansion itself was converted for use as a dining venue. Today, it houses a walk-through attraction: Room On The Broom.
This transformation is typical of the UK theme park industry. The British landscape is littered with country estates similar to Burnt Stub — acres of private land attached to aging manor houses, which had been in the hands of the aristocracy for centuries. By the early 20th century, however, many such families had fallen on hard times. Spiralling running costs, rising debt and the impact of two world wars forced many of the landowners to sell off their assets, or adapt them to new purposes. Some of the houses were demolished, while others became hotels, offices, or even film studios.
But many were opened to the public and, for the first time, the common folk could tour the opulent interiors and see how the other half lived, before exiting through the gift shop. It didn’t take much imagination for the savvier owners to install a few small fairground rides in the grounds —they attracted more families and made a bit more money.
Alton Towers is the prime example of this process. In sixty years it has grown from a crumbling ruin with a few carousels in the garden to become the UK’s premier theme park. It’s a story that’s been repeated countless times across the country, albeit on a smaller scale. Walk into almost any British tourist information centre and you’ll see fliers for a local family attraction set in the grounds of a country estate. Most of them are strictly small-scale — part historic landmark, part funfair — but a few of them have reached critical mass and become fully fledged theme parks, such as Drayton Manor in Staffordshire.
It’s rare to catch a park in the throes of moving from one state to the other, but that’s exactly what’s been happening to Paultons Park in Hampshire’s New Forest over the last few years.
Built in the grounds of the derelict Paultons Estate, Paultons Park and Bird Garden, as it was originally known, was opened in 1983 by husband and wife team John and Anne Mancey, who took the word “park” at face value. They restored the estate’s lake, and established an ornamental garden surrounded by picnic lawns, animal enclosures, and an adventure playground. Within a few years, they started adding small fairground rides aimed squarely at young children.
The park’s ethos was one of family fun in a natural setting, and it’s one the park has been careful to stick to over the years, as it has developed both the gardens and its list of attractions. You won’t find any extreme thrills at Paultons, and even its biggest rides (“The Edge”, a Zamperla Disc-o-Coaster, and “Cobra”, a Gerstlauer Bobsled Coaster) can be ridden by the average eight year old.
It’s a familiar story, and the park remained a strictly regional attraction for many years — the sort of place you might visit for the day if you were already in the area, but not a reason to visit the New Forest in itself.
All that changed in 2011 when the park opened a brand new expansion — Peppa Pig World.
For the uninitiated, Peppa Pig is an animated pre-school cartoon character, hugely popular in the UK, and her new theme park land (confusingly promoted by Paultons as a theme park in its own right) transformed Paultons’ fortunes forever. Visitor numbers reportedly doubled from 500,000 to 1 million in a single year, and the park was launched onto the national stage.
This was also a watershed moment in Paultons’ approach to design and theme. Prior to 2011, the park had followed the traditional model of regional attractions, placing its largely un-themed rides wherever there was space. Peppa Pig World was its first cohesive “land”, masterplanned and themed by RMA Attractions, the design company behind Thomas Land at Drayton Manor.
While it obviously doesn’t match the scale or depth of something like Frontierland or The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Peppa Pig World neatly captures the charm of the TV show, and largely succeeds at transforming a resolutely 2D aesthetic into a fully realised 3D environment.
In keeping with the park’s target audience, the attractions in Peppa Pig World are gentle, small-scale carnival rides, but none the less successful for that. They include a scenic car ride, a small Ferris wheel, a water playground, and the UK’s first Flying Wheels ride from manufacturer Metalbau Emmein.
The unprecedented popularity of the new land has led to some interesting operational problems, however. Crowds flock to see Peppa, leaving much of the rest of the park empty. My first visit to Paultons in 2015 certainly felt very lopsided — Peppa Pig World was always busy, while the attractions at the opposite end of the park were virtual walk-ons throughout the day.
Paultons have been quick to address this problem by redeveloping existing areas of the park into three more themed lands, in an effort to distribute foot traffic more evenly.
The first of these, Critter Creek, is a bizarre botanical garden curated by an eccentric Victorian naturalist. It’s also little more than a quick and simple re-skin of two existing attractions — a Zierer family coaster and a nocturnal animal exhibit — with the addition of a very small electric train ride. The finishing’s not great (all the props have the same texture, and some of the creatures that inhabit the land are just on the creepy side of weird) but it’s an original theme, and one that flows naturally from the neighbouring gardens and Victorian Carousel. Plus, both my children had their first ever coaster ride on the land’s Cat-O-Pillar Coaster, so there’s that.
The park’s second new land is also its most ambitious to date. The Lost Kingdom takes visitors into the ruins of an ancient Aztec-styled civilisation, where a modern team of explorers has set up a base camp in search of… dinosaurs!
Yes, it’s a dinosaur land, but unlike Disney’s Animal Kingdom or even Universal’s Jurassic Park lands, Paultons puts the dinos front-and-centre. They’re everywhere, many of them life size, and while their animatronic movements are pretty limited, there’s no denying they look good.
Lost Kingdom also has some nice thematic depth, thanks to its layered aesthetics — the temple ruins stand among lush foliage, and successive teams of explorers have added to them with their own structures, from makeshift corrugated iron sheds to starker, more modern technology. It’s another creative step forward for Paultons, and the inclusion of two Vekoma family coasters in the land’s attraction roster is a canny move to satisfy older children.
Most recently, the park has consolidated several of its bird and animal exhibits into one richly themed mini-land: Little Africa. It’s a small but significant addition. As well as adding some new animals to Paultons’ collection, Little Africa is a huge improvement on the various enclosures that were previously scattered throughout the park. It’s more dynamic and immersive, complete with a walk-through aviery and nocturnal house. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to find in a major zoo, and the theming is practically on a par with Disney.
For all these developments, it’s the ornamental gardens that are the heart of the park, and they’re things of real beauty. Small scale and intimate, they’re screened from the surrounding lands to create a lush oasis of calm that rewards exploration.
The rolling lawns of the Main Garden give onto smaller themed gardens, packed with water features and topiaries. My favourites are the African themed Jungle Falls, complete with swinging rope bridge, and the Snakes & Ladders garden, with its oversized dice and topiary serpents.
Paultons’ journey from regional attraction to fully fledged theme park is clearly well underway, but it’s far from over. Much of the park’s south western end has yet to be redeveloped and still adheres to the “rides in a field” school of planning. This is especially true of the River Ride, which is the sort of log flume you’d expect to find at a travelling funfair. I’ve no doubt they’re working on it though. Meanwhile, we can look forward to a new expansion at the opposite end of the park in 2020, with what appears to be a Route 66 theme.
In the midst of so much change, it’s tempting to wonder whether Paultons is aiming to achieve the mass appeal of parks such as Alton Towers and Chessington. It’s hard to tell — its commitment to its core audience of young families means that it’s never going to capture much of the lucrative teen or young adult markets. And, despite its recent growth, the park is still so small that you can walk from one end to the other in about 10 minutes.
These are strengths rather than weaknesses, however. Its small scale means that the park retains a cozy intimacy. Everything feels manageable, and there’s little sense that you need to hurry to see everything. Better yet, its commitment to its founding values means that Paultons still has a strong sense of its own identity, even as it flexes its creative muscles. It doesn’t want to be Alton Towers — it’s happy being Paultons.
Long may it continue.
