At the age of four, most children are thinking about the new friends they are going to make when they start school.

But in 1930 the thoughts of little June Mottershead were focused firmly on those she would soon find at her dad’s new business - mostly of the four-legged variety.

Having shifted his whole family to Chester to start the world’s first ‘zoo without bars’, George Mottershead and his family faced plenty of local opposition. And despite her tender years, June instinctively knew that finding pals among the villagers of Upton was going to be tricky.

So instead she turned to the animals for company, relying heavily on chimp Mary and the other creatures who arrived in a steady stream from the day the gates opened.

For many years June, her sister Muriel, their parents and her maternal grandparents worked tirelessly to make the zoo a success – and their astonishing story has now been turned into a BBC One drama.

Remembering the day they moved from their little two up, two down in Nantwich to their rambling new home, June, now 88, says: “The neighbours didn’t take kindly to it. They were worried about the animals getting out, and the noise from the public coming in.”

She may not have had many friends at first, but June says the animals – which included a pelican, macaw, bears, lions, polar bears and penguins to name but a few - more than made up for it.

“Mary, the chimp, was a great friend from when I was four years old. She lived until 1940, she was very intelligent and would even help dad build enclosures. You could teach her anything.”

The family’s incredible adventure all started when her father, a war veteran who survived the Battle of the Somme despite suffering a terrible spinal injury which left him in traction for two years, decided he needed to put some good back into the world.

A decade after the war ended he was still suffering the after-effects of being told he’d never walk again (he did) and of losing his younger brother, Stanley. But he had always wanted to work with animals, since seeing the conditions in Manchester’s Belle Vue zoo as a child.

Remembering his vow to create a better life for zoo creatures he set about raising the £3,500 needed to buy Chester’s Oakfield Manor and seven acres of land.

These days Chester Zoo is not only the UK’s most popular, it is one of the top 15 in the world with an estate spanning 500 acres – 110 of which are taken up by the animals.

But it was not always so successful. For the first four years, the family was permanently teetering on the brink of bankruptcy until slowly, despite the outbreak of World War II, George’s dream became a reality.

To be allowed to open, six months after they moved in, the family had to attend an inquiry in which all those in opposition tried to stop their plans. Eventually they were allowed to proceed, but there were conditions attached.

“One of the conditions was that we didn’t put signs up on the roads telling people where to go,” June says. “So it wasn’t a great success to begin with. Later, in the 40s, we used to go out at night and put up signs to the zoo on busy days, like bank holidays.

“The police didn’t mind because it helped with the traffic but by law we weren’t allowed to and we had to go round and take them all down again.”

June knows that her father’s horrendous experience in the Great War was what drove him to start the zoo. “He was very badly injured. A bullet went through one side and came out the other and he was paralysed. He didn’t think he’d walk again but he did.”

By the time June was born he had recovered from his injuries. “He took life by both hands really,” she reasons. “Afterwards people would say that he never walked anywhere, he always trotted.”

The move itself, following her father’s successful overtures to his bank manager, wasn’t easy. On the day, George had gone to collect a pair of bears in Matlock and so it was down to June’s mother Lizzie, played in the drama by Life on Mars star Liz White, to move in with her two daughters.

At the time, the family’s animals numbered just three – two goats and a monkey.

Speaking from the plush, modern day Chester Zoo, June remembers: “When we came here the floors were bare boards, there were no curtains, no heating, in fact there was mould on the kitchen tiles. It was December 7th, there were no lights, only candles. It took a bit of getting used to. Luckily my mother was a strong woman - my dad could go so far but she would have the final say.”

They were living in very different times. Back in the 1930s people could buy bear cubs in shops, along with many other wild animals, as exotic pets. Rich people would splash out and then, when their pets grew bigger, despair of what to do with them – and give them to the zoo.

“My dad never said no to an animal,” June recalls. But these were difficult times. It was the end of the Depression and many of the animals had come from very hot climates and were terribly susceptible to the cold. Antibiotics were yet to arrive on the scene.

Then war broke out, bringing fresh problems for the zoo and its hungry inhabitants. June says the family made many sacrifices to ensure the animals got fed, and remembers kind people who would give their rationing coupons to help the animals and even bring food.

She herself was enlisted for publicity shoots with many of the animals in a bid to drum up more trade.

The war also meant more outside animals needed help. She remembers the arrival of the zoo’s first elephants. “They were from an international circus but they were more or less abandoned because the man who ran it went into the RAF. The mahout and two elephants were left high and dry.”

She and her father went to collect them, bringing them back on the train. When they arrived at Chester station, her dad drove back, leaving June to walk. “He thought that elephants walking through the city centre would be good publicity,” she smiles. “I was 13 so just felt terribly embarrassed.”

As June grew older, she was entrusted with the hand-rearing of a lion cub whose mother had died during the breach-birth of a twin, which also perished. “Christie was part of the family and grew up in the house with us,” June says.

Once she was fully grown, however, it became clear that the lion was not going to reintegrate with the others in the zoo, having spent too long in the company of humans.

When she disappeared one day, it sparked a frantic hunt of the whole estate. Eventually Christie was discovered fast asleep in one of the bedrooms – along with a baby in a crib. The child was untouched but June’s parents were scared enough to realise that they could no longer keep her as a pet.

“She got sent to France, traded in for a polar bear,” June says quietly. “I was upset for years after Christie went, I felt very guilty. She had lived so closely with us. My father didn’t explain why she was going he just did it.

“After he sent her away I decided I would no longer get attached to animals I didn’t own. That’s when I went to work with the fish in the aquarium.”

June married in 1949 and in the early 50s she and husband Fred Williams went to live in Australia. “We thought we might stay forever,” she says, “but we came back for a holiday and Fred was offered the job of clerk of office at the zoo and he thought it was too good an opportunity to miss.”

June remained involved with the zoo until her father’s death in 1978. These days the mother and grandmother, who was widowed in 2012, is thrilled at the prospect of her family’s story being turned into a major TV drama.

“I was pleased because a lot of people had forgotten that my mother, grandparents, and my sister were all involved in starting the zoo as well as my father,” she explains. “They worked very, very hard for many years and contributed a lot so I was pleased for the family that they would be getting the recognition they deserved.”

Despite her love of the animals she grew up with, occasionally June admits she would have liked a more conventional upbringing. “Oh yes, sometimes when everyone had gone and you had to do all the washing up from the cafe, or on the days when you had to sit in the pay box for hours on end,” she says.

But she stops short of wishing for a more “ordinary” life, arguing that life in the zoo was, for her, entirely ordinary. “I keep hearing people describing us as eccentric,” she laughs, ‘but we weren’t. We really were just normal.”

Our Zoo starts on BBC One on Wednesday, September 3 at 9pm.

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