Episode 10 Animal Park

Longleat House is one of the finest examples of Elizabethan architecture

anywhere in the country, filled with unimaginable treasures, and exquisite beauty.

But the house is on red alert, and one area has had to be closed off

because one of the irreplaceable great ceilings is in danger of collapsing.

We'll be bringing you the full story on today's Animal Park.

Also coming up today... the monkeys are getting a trifle picky about their food.

And this man is known for working with African legend,

George Adamson, and the Born Free lions.

Now he has come to Longleat, what will he make of their pride?

It's strange not to be able to go in there and play with them and stuff,

because then I always did.

But first, Longleat House is one of the very finest examples

of Elizabethan architecture to be found anywhere in the country.

The original building work was completed around 1580, but since then the house has continued to

evolve through a whole series of alterations and renovations.

For example, the grand staircase was added a mere two centuries ago,

but the most spectacular changes were done in the 1870s,

when the great Victorian designer JD Crace put in seven magnificent ceilings.

Inspired by the interiors of Italy's most sumptuous Renaissance palaces,

these ceilings are widely regarded as Crace's masterpieces.

But now one of them is in grave peril,

something's just been spotted that shows there's a real danger of collapse.

House Steward Steve Blythe is facing an emergency in the lower dining room.

Well, last Thursday was my day off.

Late in the day, probably about four, five o'clock, I got a phone call at home from Ken to tell me

we'd had a major problem in the house, failure with the ceiling,

and what had happened, one of the guides had looked up,

noticed a gold bauble, you can see there's wire on it,

it actually slid down it, it came through the roundel over here,

it had dropped about an inch. So Ken very quickly got a ladder out,

went up, and it more or less dropped off in his hand,

but of course, we've got a major problem now because all of that area of the ceiling has loosened off.

So this is a real shocker, it's real unfortunate.

But this is not the first time there's been a problem with the ceiling.

Estate Manager Tim Moore remembers what happened 15 years ago.

When I came to Longleat in 1992, we had an issue with actual movement on

that ceiling, so we've always known the structure of the ceiling

is a bit suspect. And then secondly, about two years ago,

one of the ornamental plaster sections fell down.

We got a specialist in who looked all over it, put the piece of plaster back, stuck it back,

and the general view at the time was,

yes, the plaster was obviously of the age it is,

but generally the rest of the ceiling wasn't in too bad order.

But if the structure was given the all-clear, why,

just two years later, is there another emergency?

In fact, Longleat House could be a victim of its own success.

Head Guide Claire Mound may have the answer.

Come the summer, we were having between 3 and 4,000 people through the house every day,

and one bank holiday, we actually had 6,000 people walk through the house,

and that is a lot of feet for the poor old house!

Longleat's Curator of Historic Collections is Kate Harris.

The real problem in the room is that the identical room above,

which is the state dining room, the public can only stand on one

particular spot as they come through the door, so all the thousands of feet hit exactly the same spot

immediately above the door, and we're expecting to find, when we investigate further,

that the fragile condition of the ceiling is following the track of the many feet above.

We haven't got that confirmed yet,

but that's what we're expecting to find,

that it'll be almost a pathway of damage mirroring the room above.

But right now, Steve and his team must take immediate action.

The first thing was, we needed to seal this room off. There was the fear that something

might drop down onto a visitor or one of the guides, so they closed the room off, and of course, we had

to close the room above, because the vibration was shaking the ceiling, and that room remains closed.

Until we know what's happening here, we really can't afford to have people upstairs.

I think it's a massive aesthetic loss to the house

to have the public really unable to see this room properly.

This is one of the most important things that we show.

So as far as the interiors at Longleat go,

it's what we lead with, so it's very important to us,

and very important to the public's experience as they tour through the house.

Apart from anything else, the timing couldn't have been much worse.

This year, the exterior roof is undergoing major repairs,

and the last thing they needed

was an emergency conservation project inside the house.

We've got the cost issues involved, the fact that, as you know, we're already halfway through

a major repair for Longleat, which is renewing lead on the roof,

and we've now got possible issues of very significant expenditure within the house.

It is a concern, simply because, at this stage,

we just don't know how big a problem it is,

and it may be a very significant one.

But the only way to know just how bad the problem really is

will be to find out what's going on beneath the surface.

We'll be back later when they try to get some answers.

Earlier in the series, Deputy Head Warden Ian Turner

masterminded a plan to put one of the six million trees from the Longleat Estate into Monkey Jungle

to make its residents a new and exciting feeding station.

Things didn't go exactly to plan, and the whole operation took over

36 hours just to move the massive trunks into position.

Ben and I have joined Ian to put them to good use.

So what have we actually got here, Ian?

We've made some special cakes up for the monkeys,

-and it's got all the normal stuff what the monkeys eat, banana, peanuts and apples.

-Right.

What we need to do is shove it into this Corsican pine tree we've made for 'em specially.

We've drilled holes in, but the trouble is we need to do it quick, because the monkeys...

It's not the greatest day weather-wise but we need to scoop this out and shove it in there.

Would it be fair to describe this as a "monkey trifle"?

It would, yeah!

-It looks very good!

-I've got one, that does look good!

So they will come racing over to this?

Has the tree gone down well with the monkeys? Have they enjoyed it?

Yeah, and the reason why we're doing this is,

instead of just putting food down, they've got to sit

and have these perches where they can sit on and pick the food out,

-and if you look back, you've got one coming over straightaway.

-Oh, wow!

-They can't resist this!

-They don't like this weather.

Should we just pull back and watch and let them come in and feed?

On this tree, yeah.

Yeah? OK, let's just pull back and away and yeah,

in moments you've got the first one coming in, although rather lazily going...

It's picking up the stuff off the floor!

Picking up the stuff off the ground!

You're constantly coming up with ideas for them, do they really need it?

Cos it's a huge enclosure with lots of natural trees for them to climb, and places for them to hide.

Why is new stuff so important?

-They probably wouldn't need new stuff for us to do, because it's like being in the wild really.

-Yeah.

But this is just to keep 'em, because they've got all the young ones,

it's always good to keep their minds active,

and have new stuff all the time, and this tree's gone down a treat,

cos they've got all the perches. And look,

instead of him shoving all that, he's...

He's having to pick it out.

-He's picking all the peanuts out.

-Oh, yes, he is!

It must be incredibly satisfying to see them working away like that?

Normally they'd take five minutes to eat, and this should take a couple of hours.

That's brilliant, well we shall get down to putting this in the rest of the tree, but Ian, thank you

very much, and congratulations on a real success. You're going to have some happy monkeys this year!

Thank you very much.

Earlier in the series, four keepers travelled deep into the Tanzanian bush to work with Tony Fitzjohn.

Fitz, as he's also known, is a world-renowned conservationist

and runs the Mkomazi Game Reserve

where he's helping some of Africa's most endangered animals.

For 17 years, Fitz worked alongside legend George Adamson, the Lion Man of Africa.

Together they helped rehabilitate and save captive lions before releasing them back to the wild,

stories that were told in the book and Oscar-winning film, Born Free.

There we were, sharing the lives of these incredible predators, we just

ran like mad things for nearly 20 years and didn't stop.

During the trip, Head Warden Keith Harris

helped in a project to release hunting dogs back to the wild.

For him, working with Fitz was very special.

I've read books and seen films, you hear stories, and it's been really great to work with him.

And being out here again in the wild and getting amongst these animals, it's been great.

So when he heard Fitz was visiting the UK, Keith wasted no time in

offering him his first-ever tour of a safari park.

-Tony?

-Keith, what a treat!

-Nice to meet you.

-Nice to see you again.

-Sunny England!

-Bit cold or..?

-Yeah, a bit chilly.

So can I get a tour, or are you busy today?

-Yep, hop in the car and we'll go and take you round.

-Thanks very much.

Like so many visitors, Pets' Corner is the first stop.

Ain't they wonderful? Everyone should have some in their bathroom!

Here, the snakes are a bit more friendly that Fitz is used to.

-Wow!

-There we are, how about that?

I had, sort of, 11-foot black mambas in the house.

This is great, with the rolling hills, it's beautiful.

Next, it's up to the East Africa Reserve, home to giraffe,

ostrich and zebra, which should be like a slice of home to Fitz.

They look in very good shape indeed. It's a very nice scene.

It's nice to know that what you see is what you get.

If you've got to live in England, for a guy like me, this'd be perfect.

In Tanzania, Fitz has built a sanctuary for the highly endangered and dangerous black rhino,

where trackers follow them to ensure they're safe from poachers.

At Longleat, techniques are slightly different.

I just love this guy, herding the rhinos on the tractor.

They almost look like sculptures, don't they?

It's very strange for me to see white rhino.

They're very placid.

I'd be rather nice to have some black rhino,

because there'd be a lot of cars here with punctured doors!

There's one final stop on Fitz's tour, and that's in lion country,

where he's certainly no stranger to these big cats.

Join us later when Fitz heads straight into the lions' den.

Back in the Great House, there's a crisis in the lower dining room,

and Longleat's Curator of Historic Collections Kate Harris

is worried that the bauble falling down is just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm very concerned, because we thought we'd tackled this problem,

and it turns out to be a much more severe problem than we originally thought.

And it's because it's unknown, whether we're going to have to take the whole ceiling to bits,

and put it back together again, and the whole issue of whether

the plasterwork has reached the end of its shelf life,

those are real unknowns at the moment, so we've yet to find out just how bad the news is.

In order to get to the ceiling, and work out the root of the problem,

House Steward Steve needs to ensure the room is completely clear.

The table's laid with antique porcelain and silverware,

which must be packed away safely.

Time to call in the professionals.

There's hardly a thing on this table that's less than two centuries old,

but June Windes and her army of cleaners are well used to handling such delicate and priceless items.

Once the room is clear, Steve can get to work.

They're setting up a scaffold in order to examine the ceiling closely.

Ken Windes, June's husband, has been called in.

He was the House Steward before Steve, and knows the building inside out.

Do you want to turn him here, Ken?

Yes, that way.

First, they need to take down the roundel.

-Got him?

-Yep, got him.

Behind it is the system of supports that holds the ceiling in place.

OK, explain to me how this ceiling works, Ken.

Well, basically, what you've got here is a fletch beam,

it was about 15 years ago,

this beam failed, and the floor started to sag,

and they reinforced this beam with metal.

So what they did is brought the beam back to its original position.

They've actually strapped the ceiling supports to that beam,

which means that what you're doing now is

you're transferring any vibration from the floor above

directly to the ceiling,

rather than going through the intermediate beam system.

Which I think could have been a major mistake.

So by strengthening the beam supporting the floor above,

the ceiling below may have suffered.

This is obviously where the concern is,

you've got little cracks like this appearing, you see.

This bit here is actually moving up and down,

and that crack is actually tracking right across there,

-look, into this area.

-Yes.

Some of these bulbs have vibrated loose.

There's a good example. In fact,

I'm going to go for it and take that away, in case it falls on somebody.

For Ken, who's devoted a quarter of a century

to looking after this great house, it's a very sad moment.

It is heartbreaking when you find something like this that has been up there hundreds of years.

And you do get a feeling for the house as you live with it

and...serve it, if you like, for quite a long time,

so that when things start breaking to bits like this, then it is sad.

And it brings a lump to your throat in many ways,

in the fact that, what's happening now, how far is this going to go?

And what's more important is, how can we stop it happening?

I'd like to think it was going to be here in another 400 years.

It's going to take time and a great deal of careful investigation,

before they'll know exactly what must be done.

Over the next few months, Estate Manager Tim Moore is going to have a lot to do.

It's a major problem -

we don't know quite what our strategy's going to be.

With this sort of problem, in conservation terms,

cautious enquiry and really trying to check through detail is all-important.

We're going to have to take it steady, to get the experts in, and then tease out a solution

and a strategy, we don't know the cost implications,

we don't know quite how far we've got to go with it,

it's quite frankly an open-ended issue at the moment.

We'll be back in the house later to follow how the crisis unfolds.

One of the most popular sections in Pets' Corner is the collection of Siberian chipmunks.

Recently, six new faces were introduced to the group,

with the hope that they would kick-start a new breeding programme,

and sure enough, the plan worked.

The babies are now a few weeks old, and I've come along to meet them.

I'm down at Pets' Corner

with Head of Section Darren Beasley, and we are entirely surrounded

by chipmunks, none of whom I recognise, I have to say!

No, they're not long born, they're just coming out of their boxes now!

And what pretty little creatures, with these gorgeous stripes on them.

Aren't they smashing? Obviously these are called whites,

you see this little chap here,

has still got the very faint brown stripes, so they're not albino, they do have colour

pigment in them, but it's a recessive gene, so basically we can encourage this white colour to come forward

by putting the right mums and dads in with the right colour history.

Being this very pale colour in the wild wouldn't be a great survival mechanism?

No, it'd be so easy for the predators to pick them off, because they'd stand out so well.

I mean, naturally these Siberian chipmunks, as we know them,

they breed a brown colour with sort of dark brown to black stripes,

and really that is their camouflage, that's to break up their outline.

You've had babies, they've all grown up together,

can they stay together or do you start getting factions with males and females and fighting?

Yes, you do have a dominancy, you do have a bit of fighting,

but the name chipmunk is this "chip, chip", it's this calling noise,

and it can be calling for a boyfriend, girlfriend, or it can be saying, "stay away."

As we're going to expand - this is a very popular exhibit -

we're going to expand this and spread our wings, so we want loads more chipmunks.

It's a good mixture of stuff here,

lots of seeds, monkey nuts, and fresh fruit.

What sort of stuff would they be eating in the wild?

They're opportunists, they will take leafy buds, they'll take flowers, they'll take small insects,

we put a meat protein biscuit in here for that.

We give them a big selection of lots of nice things, and they'll choose what they like.

A complete delight, Darren, thank you very much for introducing me.

-Thank you.

-And enjoy yourself, guys!

I don't think there's any doubt that they're going to do that!

Back up at the house,

the Longleat staff have been working round the clock to get the dining rooms back open to the public,

and Kate and I have run up to get the latest.

We've come back into the house to the lower dining room to meet House Steward, Steve Blythe,

and to find out what the latest is, Steve, on the ceiling,

and I've suddenly seen this bit!

Yes, we needed to take this roundel down to have a look,

to see what was going on, so we've had all the surveyors in,

we've had all the architects in, and we're moving forward.

Kate our curator's been getting lots of information for us on

the history of what's been happening with the ceiling, and that's all come together now,

hopefully we're ready to move on, but a good bit of news is,

the room's open again.

I was going to ask, is it the whole room? You've got some scaffolding over here?

We've still got equipment in the room where we still have people

coming in and having another look at this,

and what is this, and what would happen here.

-Where did this piece come from?

-Up here. Where you'll see,

we've got the huge hole in the ceiling at the moment.

-Blimey!

-Wow! How are you going to be able to minimise damage like this happening again?

That's part of what we're doing at the moment, before we do the repair, we need to know what happened,

why has it happened, and that's what the architects, the surveyors, are looking at, they'll report to us.

and before we do any repairs, we'll be looking into the future and what needs to be happening in the future.

It's fantastic news that at least half the room's open.

Yeah, and of course we're all happy about it,

and of course Lord and Lady Bath are very happy about it, that we've got visitors coming through.

-Well, Steve, that is fantastic news, thank you very much.

-OK, thank you.

Head Warden, Keith Harris, is giving Tony Fitzjohn his first ever tour of a safari park.

But what will the apprentice of Mr Born Free

make of Longleat's famous lions?

Wow! Look at this!

Look at this lot, isn't this lovely?

And there's two main breeding females in here, so presumably,

your wild lions, they'd be scarred and...

-Yeah, these are... It's all a bit strange to see them in such perfect condition.

-Yeah.

For someone who's dedicated their life to giving animals their freedom,

this is an unusual experience for Fitz.

It's quite strange, I've never been to a safari park before,

I've never been to Longleat,

and I have seen animals in captivity, and I don't...

I don't slam zoos, there is a place in this paved and civilised world of ours to...

to have animals in captivity.

I'm a bit surprised they look in such good physical shape

and so relaxed and in such good mental shape for captive animals,

but I'd rather have a jumbo jet waiting and pile them all in the back,

but then, I know it's too old for most of them to go back.

Despite his love for lions, Fitz hasn't worked with them for some time.

My last lioness was poisoned in the wild about two and a half years ago,

but basically, since I moved to Mukanazi,

I've not worked with the animals I love so much, which are lions,

so everything I say here is tinged by the fact that these are the big love of my life, you know?

It's strange not to be able to go in there and play with them and stuff, which is what I always did.

Do you fancy releasing these?

Why, is there a local village or what?!

-It's an enclosure or...

-Don't scare the locals!

-Pull straight down.

-Pull it straight down.

Latch in there, and off they go.

Well, they didn't need much encouragement?

-No, no.

-And the big guy?

Right, if you flick the catch over, he'll tell you off, but don't worry.

LION ROARS

And then just pull the slide.

-Aww, good boy, good boy.

-It's not really much of a telling off really!

He was quite good today, I thought he was going to be a bit grumpier!

And that's it.

Well, I've put a few animals back into the wild,

but this was the quickest programme I've ever been involved in!

With the release of the pride done, Fitz's visit to Longleat is complete.

But what does an African conservationist make of the work Keith and his staff are doing?

I've always wanted to come to Longleat since it opened years ago and I heard about it, one because it

was a lion park, and two, because it was England, be interesting to see, and I've never come.

It's very strange.

I'm not meant to like animals in captivity, and I've spent my whole life setting animals free.

I come here and talk to Keith and I see these animals,

they're all cared about, loved so much,

well managed and well run, and, kind of, where I come from,

so much is being destroyed,

so what I'm feeling is not what I thought I'd be feeling or should be feeling.

Now, this all sounds very silly,

but it is a great privilege to be here too,

and I think everybody that comes here should feel that.

It's a very special place,

and I hope I leave here with some good friends and certainly some good memories.

Well, sadly, it's almost the end of the whole series,

but before we go, Kate and I have come up to the Rhino House

to say goodbye to Winston,

and to thank Head Warden, Keith Harris, for another fantastic year.

-Sad, isn't it?

-It is sad,

but it has been a really exciting year for Longleat,

lots of new things coming in, lots of new animals being born.

-That's right, we've had new tigers, warthogs, which I think they've been great fun.

-Yeah.

We've had all these births, so it's been great.

And even the older animals, like Winston, are still doing so well?

Great to see him still... up and about and...

He got a bit down, but he's enjoying the spring and the summer now.

Absolutely. Well, Keith, thank you very much.

-Thank you.

-We, I suppose, should pack our bags and go, shouldn't we?

Whoa, no... The series has finished, but you two haven't, I'm sorry!

You know this is going to be horrid, don't you? What is that!

-Winston needs his mud bath!

-Why?!

-There's one for you.

-OK.

This is... He's been in on the yard here,

so he needs softness on the skin,

you put cream on your face, here's Winston look, can you please...?

-I knew...

-There's not many animals I'd do this for!

-I've been called back to the office! I've got to go!

-Brilliant!

-Here you are, Winston!

-OK, how are you getting on over there?

Your mud pack to make your skin beautiful and soft.

That really is it for us,

we are obviously going to be here for a while...

Don't even think about it, Fogle!

We look forward to seeing you again soon. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Ready... three, two, one!!

How did she do that?!

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