Polar Bear Enclosure, Edinburgh Zoo 1967

A polar bear relaxes on the rockwork of its enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo in 1967, watched by visitors gathered behind the railings above. The setting is still very much of its time, with artificial stone cliffs, a dark water moat and a light blue and cream Bedford CA ice cream van parked behind the crowd, carrying Walls branding on its side.This bear would have been either Queenie or Jim, the zoo’s two polar bears during the period.

It’s a valuable record of an enclosure that later disappeared from Edinburgh Zoo in its original form. After the end of the zoo’s polar bear era, the old bear enclosure was eventually adapted for other uses, and the last Edinburgh polar bear, Mercedes, was moved in 2009 to the much larger setting at Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie. This photograph therefore captures both a well-remembered animal exhibit and a vanished part of the zoo’s mid-twentieth-century layout.