Drusillas Park celebrates its 100th birthday

A Sussex zoo is celebrating its 100th birthday after growing from a roadside café into one of the county's most popular attractions.

Drusillas Park started life as a tea cottage in 1925 when Captain Douglas Ann and his wife bought the land for £1,000 - the modern equivalent of £78,000.

Now home to over 100 different animals, the park has continued to be a mainstay in the region for a century.

It has celebrated its milestone birthday by releasing archive images and footage charting the rise of the attraction and the challenges it has faced.

From 1925 Capt Ann and his wife Drusilla collected animals for their "baby zoo", including a lemur called Georgina and a chimpanzee called Tarzan.

Today, Drusillas looks after 80 different animal species including capybaras, red pandas and critically endangered animals such as yellow-breasted capuchin monkeys and cotton-tailed tamarins.

Featured on the logo for the park, lemurs are the only animal to have been housed at the park for its entire history.

Nigel the Cotton-top Tamarin monkey at Drusillas

Drusillas has faced a number of different challenges including bombing attacks in the Second World War and a devastating fire in April 1954, which gutted the park.

In 1958, Capt Ann died and left Drusillas to his eldest son, Michael, who took over aged 21.

Mr Ann continued to run the park with his wife, Kitty, until 1997 when it was sold by the Ann family after 72 years.

The park was taken over by Laurence and Christine Smith, who still own the business.

The couple stepped back from the day-to-day running of Drusillas in 2021 and the park is now run by their children, Cassie Poland and Ollie Smith.