In the end, it was the weather that did for it.
Despite being one of the biggest tourist attractions in Wales, and welcoming up to a quarter of a million visitors a year, the unpredictable climate in this corner of the country meant the necessary visitor numbers could not be guaranteed.
Without that certainty, the sober business reality was that Penscynor Wildlife Park’s future was over.
The demise of the venue, which had been a staple destination for generations of Welsh schoolchildren, was hugely mourned, and by none more so than the man who had to make the decision to close it.
It was a heartbreaking call for Jon Quant, who in the preceding years had revitalised the park which had started almost by accident.
It had begun as a private collection of birds that had been put together by his grandfather Idris Hale, the man behind Neath-based construction company I.G. Hale Ltd and Hale Homes, whose interest in wildlife had taken him overseas to Indonesia, where the images he'd filmed of a Komodo dragon had been snapped up by the BBC.
The collection began to swell in size, so when the semi-derelict Pencynor House and its 12 acres of land in Cilfrew in the Neath Valley, came on the market, Idris bought it simply with a view to using it to keep his bird and avaries.
“My grandmother never wanted to move,” said Jon Quant.
“It took my grandfather a few years to persuade her, and it was in the mid-sixties that they eventually moved there.
“Then what started happening was my grandfather would come home from work, and there would be people waiting at the gate, asking if they could come in to have a look at his birds.
“He would show them around, but it started happening more and more, so he decided he would open it up for a few days to raise money for charity, and my grandmother Mair would bake apple tarts for the visitors.”
One day, the couple went to collect more birds from a seller, who also happened to own a Capuchin monkey, which took a shine to Mair.
After agreeing a sale, the monkey became their first mammalian addition to the collection, which began to snowball.
Take a look inside Folly Farm
“It was an incredible upbringing,” said Jon.
“I spent all my weekends and school holidays in the park. Any time I was not in school I would be there. It was a fantastic experience. I was given responsibilities beyond what was usual for children of my age.
“When I was 12, it was up to me to look after the marmosets and Tamarins, including the Golden Lion Tamarins, which are on the endangered list.
“My sister, Amanda, who is two years younger than me, also had her own responsibilities and from 12 onwards my friends would become involved.
“It was incredible. There’s not many people who could say to their friends ‘do you want to come back to mine to see my penguins’?”
In the mid-seventies, the park’s simian population grew, after the family were asked if they could provide a home to a chimpanzee, which had been smuggled into the country via Pembroke Dock hidden in the engine of a lorry.
A second rescued chimp followed, and as Penscynor’s reputation grew, more followed, including one called Brooke, which had been the first male chimp used to advertise Brooke Bond Tea.
Sadly, Brooke would kill the first offspring he fathered, prompting future young chimps to be brought up for the early part of their lives not in the enclosure but in the family’s home.
Eventually, in addition to birds and monkeys, Penscynor would provide a home to sea lions, snakes and meerkats and would employ 40 staff, rising to 150 at peak times during the summer.
At its height, it would attract 250,000 visitors, and was one of the top three tourist attractions in the country.
It was a regular destination for schools, with up to fifty buses arriving a day, sometimes splitting the day out with nearby Dan y Ogof caves.
Its logo, featuring a stylised menagerie of animals, was ubiquitous on car stickers handed to the thousands of visitors - and was even adopted, with permission, as a record sleeve by critically-acclaimed South Wales rock band Liberty 37.
In the early eighties, the opening of the alpine slide and chair lift, at a cost of £250,000, almost immediately doubled visitor numbers, recouping its investment within a couple of years.
It also developed a worldwide reputation for its breeding programme, and later many of its staff would go on to take up positions at celebrated zoological locations, including David Field, who is now a director of London Zoo, Grenville Roles, curator of birds at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, and Howie Watkins, who starred in The Really Wild Show.
But by the nineties, it had become apparent that things needed to change.
“In Februrary 1996 we held a meeting. The park had made a loss for the previous ten years, and the costs were growing," said Jon.
“We had increasing numbers of birds and animals and something needed to be done, because otherwise it would become unsustainable.
“It was decided I would take it over, and initially we got the losses down from £100,000 to £7,000.
“In 1998, it was predicted we would finally make a profit, of around £50,000. But because of the weather, by May in 1998 that predicted profit turned into a £150,000 loss.
“The ideal weather for the park was dry and overcast. If it was sunny, people would go to the beach or if it was wet they would go to leisure centres or the cinema.
“The decision was one of mixed emotions. As a business decision, it was absolutely the right thing to do for the family.
“But personally it was difficult. It was a place where I had grown up, and it had given me an incredible childhood.”
The decision taken, almost 2,000 birds and animals had to be found new homes. They included the chimps, who moved to the nearby Cefn yr Erw monkey sanctuary in the Brecon Beacons.
Penscynor is now derelict, though you can still see signs of what was once there. You can see several pictures here.
Jon, who now runs Palletised Shipping Services, responsible for transporting goods across the globe, said: “I come from a close family, and I was glad that two of my daughters, who were aged five and eight, got to experience a year of the park while it was open. I wish my third daughter had the same opportunity.
“It was an incredible way to grow up, and it taught me and my sister a massive amount about life.”
