Longleat marks 60 years of a ‘world first’ that changed safari park history
Longleat is marking 60 years since a decision that once sounded reckless: putting 50 lions into the Wiltshire countryside and opening the gate for visitors to drive through. What began as a gamble has become part of the estate’s identity, and the anniversary has revived questions about how a privately managed heritage home turns risk into survival. For Ceawlin Thynn, the 8th Marquess of Bath, the story of longleat is not only about lions, but about an institution that helped redefine what a stately home could be.
Why Longleat mattered then — and still does now
Sixty years ago, Henry Thynne, the 6th Marquess of Bath, opened the Lions of Longleat drive-through attraction with help from circus owner Jimmy Chipperfield. The move followed an earlier first: he had already become the first to open an English stately home to the public. This second step took the estate’s financial future in a new direction, while also placing it into territory that was, at the time, controversial enough to be debated in the Houses of Parliament.
The scale of the experiment was striking. Fifty lions were bought from zoos, circuses and private collections around the world, including a number used in the filming of Born Free. The reaction was mixed and, at points, openly alarmed. As one family member later reflected, people were “scandalised, nervous, terrified” about what might go wrong when lions were brought into the countryside. That anxiety now sits beside the anniversary as evidence of how unusual the idea looked before it worked.
How longleat turned a gamble into an institution
The lasting significance of longleat lies in what followed after the opening day. Over the years, the park expanded and developed, and it is now home to more than 120 species, many of them endangered. That evolution matters because it shows the attraction did not remain a novelty built around one daring idea; it became a broader enterprise with a conservation-facing profile and a much larger public reach.
Ceawlin Thynn said his grandfather would be “proud” that the attraction has become a national institution. He also described the original move as “a gamble” and went further, saying it was “forging through a Rubicon that was never forged through before. ” In his view, the older Marquess did not simply try something unusual. He helped create “an entire new industry that hadn’t existed before. ”
That assessment is important because it captures the deeper legacy of the site. The story is not just about an estate surviving through entertainment. It is about a family business model that altered expectations around how historic property could be financed, opened and sustained. In that sense, longleat became more than a destination; it became a precedent.
Heritage, visitors and the pressures of stewardship
The estate today remains a family home as well as a public attraction. Ceawlin Thynn and Emma Thynn, the Marchioness of Bath, manage and live at the estate with their two young sons. That arrangement highlights a tension that runs through the whole story: serving visitors while protecting heritage.
There is a practical dimension to that balance. The estate has been in the family for 16 generations, and that length of continuity can create both opportunity and friction. The family has acknowledged there can be some “push and pull” between public access and the responsibility to preserve what the estate represents. At longleat, the visitor economy is not separate from history; it is now one of the ways that history is maintained.
What the anniversary suggests beyond Wiltshire
The broader significance of longleat reaches beyond one park in one county. The model it helped pioneer showed that a heritage property could become commercially resilient without abandoning its identity. That idea has echoes far beyond the estate itself, especially at a time when historic institutions continue to search for ways to remain relevant, funded and visible.
There is also an implied warning in the anniversary. The same kind of boldness that made the attraction possible was once considered risky enough to trigger national concern. Yet the outcome suggests that some of the most consequential institutional shifts begin as uncertainty, not consensus. The estate’s 60-year milestone therefore reads less like a simple celebration and more like a reminder that innovation in heritage often starts with discomfort.
For the current Lord Bath, the verdict is clear: the family’s earlier leap created something larger than a tourist attraction. Whether longleat can keep balancing growth, heritage and public expectation will shape the next chapter, and the question now is how far that original gamble can continue to carry the estate forward.
