Official Description

Please see below details of our website, we have the world's largest breeding Family groups in captivity of African Elephants, Western Lowland Gorilla and Black Rhino, we have been very successful in breeding Snow leopards, Pallas cats, African Hunting dogs and much more.

At our Port Lympne site which is over 400 acres we have just introduced a new attraction the African Experience, an additional 100 acre park adjacent to Port Lympne with over 200 animal roaming free including, Zebra, Giraffe, Black Buck, Waterbuck, Ostrich, Black Rhino to name but a few.

Visitor Reviews

GoodZoos.com Reviews

It's six years since we visited Port Lympne to review it for The Good Zoo Guide. But it remains my favourite zoo in the world. What more can I say? I don't want to write an out of date review – here are some of my original comments. If you have been here recently – please send us a review How to contact us [Click Here]

Port Lympne Zoo Park is the second, and more ambitions of the late John Aspinall's zoos. (See Howletts) In 1973 very few conservationists had even heard of Aspinall. They might have known of him as a millionaire gambler, and an unorthodox keeper of animals – but his extraordinary achievements with endangered species had scarcely been reported. Howletts Zoo was not yet open to the public, and he had yet to see his first gorilla birth.

In 1973 however, John Aspinall was no longer a gambler, and was far from being a millionaire. He was in fact, nearly penniless after a massive loss on Wall Street. What remained was berely enough to pay the wages of the dozen or so staff that worked at Howletts, or to feed the animals. There could not have been a worse time to start a completely new zoo. Yet on the cold February morning that he first saw the estate of Port Lympne with its 300 rolling acres of dense woodland and pasture, and its breathtaking views out accross the Romney Marshes and the English Channel, Aspinall knew that his seven year search for a new home for his growing collection of endangered animals was over, and straightaway he bought the entire estate for £360,000.

It is hard to imagine that any visitor could come to Port Lympne without being deeply affected by the place. It is without doubt one of England's most beautiful estates, and it is arguably Europe's finest zoo. That it survived the early years of penury was due in no small part to the investment and guarantees of the financier James Goldsmith, and the support of many of Aspinall's friends and associates. But survive it did. The estate is not an ancient one like Howletts. It dates back little earlier than the first world war, having been commissioned by the young millionaire Philip Sassoon exclusively for his use during the month of August, when the famous and the fashionable were lavishly entertained here. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York (Edward VII and George VI) stayed here; so too did George Bernard Shaw, T.E.Lawrence, Lloyd George, and Charlie Chaplin. Winston Churchill, a regular house guest, painted several views of the house – threee of which are here on display. The painter Rex Whistler painted decorative murals on an entire room (the tent room) and this is open to visitors to the zoo. To complement this, Aspinall commissioned the wildlife artisit Arthur Spencer Roberts to paint another drawing room in the house. The reulting mural took three and a half years to complete and is quite magnificent, featuring more than 220 species of South East Asian animals.

The park at Port Lympne is a huge natural ampitheatre, and the complete walk around the zoo is a gentle endurance test of probably more than three miles. It you add to this the great number of spectacular animals to see, the views to admire, and of course the house to visit, you should really allow a whole day to get the best from the visit. Arrive early and do not expect to leave until late.

Tha animal collection at Port Lympne reads like a roll call of some of the rarest and most endangered creatures on the planet: animals like the Barbary lion (extinct in the wild), the African golden cat, swamp deer, Siberian tigers, Indiuan elephants, Malayan tapirs, lowland gorillas, and black rhinos. Just as at Howletts the Aspinall philosophy applies here; the animals are treated as friends; they are pampered, their food is the finest quality, the most varied, and without a doubt the most expensive in the world. And the emphasis is upon keeping animales in large numbers, as many as possible of each species, with as much space as possible. Like Howletts, the final adjudicator of the technique is success. The animals at Port Lympne are vigorous, healthy, and every species has either bred here or can confidently be expected to breed here soon. The optimism of the place is heady, and the affection lavished on the animals is evident.

There are few zoos quite like Port Lympne for walking around. At various times the path weaves through dense woodland – the across open grassland – then through exquisite ornamental gardens – then along a splendid avenue of horse chestnut trees. It is a farm and a stately home and a forest all bound into one.

The car park is in an adjoining farm – one of several where the zoo grows much of the fresh produce for feeding the animals, mangold, lucerne, maize, red clover, and kale. 150 tonnes of mangold alone are grown here between January and May for the elephants, the rhinos, and the grazing animals.

My own notes on Port Lympne are too out of date to dwell much on the animal collection. Maybe readers of goodzoos.com will update this site. Alas, the Sumatran rhinos have now returned to Indonesia. But I am sure those wonderful gorillas are still there, that fantastic herd of Pere David's deer, those black rhinos, the snow leopards. Take binoculars. This will be probably the best zoo you will ever visit.

Species List