The full booklet is on my Flickr account.
Here are the photographs from the guide.
Dorman Museum Guide 1959
Show on map Show on map Show on map Show on map Hidden Teesside
Show on map Show on map The full booklet is on my Flickr account.
Here are the photographs from the guide.
Once again, thanks Chris for sharing these pictures. I remember it as though it was yesterday. As a lad I recall being fascinated and a little scared by the lion eating the zebra as you walked into the front door and running upstairs to the living bees display fixed to the window. Sadly all gone now (I wonder if any of the exhibits are in storage somewhere). I recall excitedly (about 25 yrs ago) taking my two sons to see them and telling them about the lion and the hundreds of wildlife displays only to be disappointed to find they had been removed. Please keep posting
The room of birds is still as it always was, there are a few of the original animals in the entrance now, you can see a snippet of them above the people heads here, I think its the same lion third from the left, just stood on a rock now rather than a zebra.
A great piece of nostalgia, does anyone remember the huge “banana spider” that was found when unloading bananas at the docks ?
I have vague memories of a large dead Dormans Butterfly Collection. If I am not mistaken They were mostly moths, and kept in wide wood drawers under some long counters,? There was the Cannon Street Moth who flew around in two’s for protection, The Transporter Bridge Eagle Head Moth, a number of Middlesbrough Town Hall Butterflys, And a dozen or so, Vampire Moths including one that had attacked someone in the Empire Theatre, and been caught ‘Up In the Balcony’ using a cardboard ice cream cup as a net. I liked best the Green Buses Moth, the Red United Buses Moth, and the Black Locomotion railway moths, you could see them for real flying under Marton Road railway bridge on sunny Days, or clinging to Winterschladens cellar Walls and ceilings if you asked the staff politely “Could you go downstairs to see them.” Then there was that big moggie stood near the door when you went in, that was everyone’s favourite including me. If it had been alive I’d loved to have put it on a lead and walked it around Albert Park, I think it was too big to go on the swings, but a boat trip on the lake would have been okay for it. Bob Wilson (Five Lamps)