Crinkley Bottom Cricket St Thomas 5th March 2022

[Matt N]

Hi guys. While it’s probably one of the lesser known defunct UK theme parks these days, I’m led to believe we have quite a few people on here who grew up in the UK in the 1990s, or were more generally around in the UK in the 1990s for that matter, and know about Mr Blobby and Crinkley Bottom in Cricket St Thomas, Somerset. For those that don’t know, Crinkley Bottom was a theme park themed to Mr Blobby, as well as various other characters.

I mainly posted this thread, though, because I’m currently staying in a lodge complex in Chard that’s only around a mile’s walk from the former site of Crinkley Bottom. As such, my dad and I took a walk down there today to see what we could find, and while the site is now a Warner hotel and no longer looks remotely theme park-like, like most other stately homes in Britain, there are still a few little oddities there to find if you know where to look. I mostly took pictures of stuff that I thought looked vaguely theme park-y, and like it could have been part of Crinkley Bottom, but having consulted a Crinkley Bottom park map and looked online after getting back to our lodge, I actually wasn’t far off. I did take a few photos that I thought might be of interest to you guys. I know it’s not technically a trip report, but it is a series of photos from a defunct UK theme park site that I thought might be of interest to you guys, and I wasn’t sure where else to put them; I hope you like the photos from my little trip around the former Crinkley Bottom site!

For reference, here’s the map me and my dad used, as a point of reference:

(Credit to dunblobbin.com for this image: https://www.dunblobbin.com/park-map)

Firstly, here are a few oddities I found that looked like they might have been from when it was a wildlife park:

And then we came to what was unmistakably the former railway bridge:

And I also photographed this building that was apparently home to the Animals of Farthing Wood attraction according to the map:

After that, we crossed what was marked as the Flamingo bridge on the park map, walked along the former railway line, and walked back to the other side along the Crinkley Bridge, at which point I photographed a distinctly colourful looking building, which I later ascertained was the Crinkley Bottom Art Gallery, with what looked like the Extremely Nice Thingy Shop next to it (possibly not in the photograph):

(It looked more colourful and stood out more in person… I was zoomed in a lot here)

We then came to the Holey Tree, listed on the park map:

And finally, we then took a walk up to Cricket House itself:

But that’s not all! As it turns out, the very track we walked down to get there used to be the track for the safari (which you can see once you know that was the case), and we also saw a tunnel that used to be Mr Blobby’s Lair, supposedly! (I didn’t photograph that because my dad thought it looked too new to be part of the park)

So while it’s not a full-fledged theme park trip report, I definitely had a very productive and interesting afternoon here in Chard; I hope you like my photos of remnants of this slightly more obscure piece of UK theme park history! Did anyone ever get to visit this interesting attraction, or do you remember it?

 

[Matt N]

Sorry to double post, but for those who have absolutely no idea of what I’m talking about, here’s a documentary by Expedition Theme Park, for a bit more info on what Crinkley Bottom actually was:

 

[furie]

I have to say, that even though the show was all about double entendre and puns. "Throttled Cock" Farm is inappropriate on all levels for a family show and kid's park

Anyway, thank you for posting this, and putting in all the additional little bits of research

This is one of those things that passed me by a little bit. Noel Edmonds was absolutely a Saturday night staple on my TV schedule when I was at home. I don't think anyone quite understands the concept of "prime time TV" now, and "Saturday Tea-time" was the biggest. With limited choices, almost everyone in the country watched these shows.

I left home (and my annual theme park trips) in 1992, just at the height of the shows. I wandered into a five-year haze of university life, barely touched by the day-to-day of the hoi polloi.

Personally, I thought the whole thing was a bit of an embarrassment. That the British public could be so easily taken in by a scruffy, incomprehensible blob of ineptitude... I was wrong then and wrong now...

I remembered hearing about the plan to open the park(s), but treated it with a fair amount of disdain. I was "off" theme parks at the time, so it never interested me as much as it would do today.

I loved ready this and I find it fascinating. So much just kind of left to rot, not even flattened to forget the sorry past.

The next time I heard of Cricket-St.Thomas was just after I'd finished uni. I mentioned I'd been doing some work in Somerset to some friends, and they'd been recently, and the park had a Lemur walkthrough. This will be late 1990's early 2000's. The internet was still pretty fresh back then, but a search dug out that it was on the site of Crinkley Bottom. I always planned a trip there, but life got in the way and I never bothered.

Just thinking about it, and in 1996/1997, I visited Thorpe and Legoland for the first times (as my interest in Theme Parks waxed). I could have easily gone to Crinkley Bottom instead. Am I sad I missed out on such a unique experience in favour of those? My time at Granada Studios, American Adventure and Camelot say "I shouldn't be"

 

[rob666]

The Morecambe one resulted in a council funding row that went on for years..."Blobbygate" no less.
Ended up costing £2.5 million in legal fees to the council.
"I thought Morecambe was famous for shrimps, It is now famous for fudge"...Noel Edmonds.
It was in Happy Mount Park, on the site of the derelict Wombles Burrow...I kid you not!

 

[Matt N]

I have to say, that even though the show was all about double entendre and puns. "Throttled Cock" Farm is inappropriate on all levels for a family show and kid's park

Anyway, thank you for posting this, and putting in all the additional little bits of research

This is one of those things that passed me by a little bit. Noel Edmonds was absolutely a Saturday night staple on my TV schedule when I was at home. I don't think anyone quite understands the concept of "prime time TV" now, and "Saturday Tea-time" was the biggest. With limited choices, almost everyone in the country watched these shows.

I left home (and my annual theme park trips) in 1992, just at the height of the shows. I wandered into a five-year haze of university life, barely touched by the day-to-day of the hoi polloi.

Personally, I thought the whole thing was a bit of an embarrassment. That the British public could be so easily taken in by a scruffy, incomprehensible blob of ineptitude... I was wrong then and wrong now...

I remembered hearing about the plan to open the park(s), but treated it with a fair amount of disdain. I was "off" theme parks at the time, so it never interested me as much as it would do today.

I loved ready this and I find it fascinating. So much just kind of left to rot, not even flattened to forget the sorry past.

The next time I heard of Cricket-St.Thomas was just after I'd finished uni. I mentioned I'd been doing some work in Somerset to some friends, and they'd been recently, and the park had a Lemur walkthrough. This will be late 1990's early 2000's. The internet was still pretty fresh back then, but a search dug out that it was on the site of Crinkley Bottom. I always planned a trip there, but life got in the way and I never bothered.

Just thinking about it, and in 1996/1997, I visited Thorpe and Legoland for the first times (as my interest in Theme Parks waxed). I could have easily gone to Crinkley Bottom instead. Am I sad I missed out on such a unique experience in favour of those? My time at Granada Studios, American Adventure and Camelot say "I shouldn't be"

Thanks for the nice comments @furie; glad you liked my post!

To be totally honest, I can’t quite wrap my head around the concept of Noel Edmonds being a huge celebrity like he clearly was. As someone who knows him solely as the host of Deal or No Deal, I was very surprised to discover that he was effectively once the Ant & Dec of the 90s (albeit a solo version, of course)! As someone who was born after Blobby-mania had disappeared (I was born in 2003), I’ll also be honest and say that I’d never heard of Crinkley Bottom prior to watching an Expedition Theme Park documentary about it one Christmas. It’s not one of the more revered defunct parks in Britain, as far as I can tell (certainly not missed in the same way as the likes of American Adventure or Camelot, anyway).

Interesting that it never really registered on the radar of adults like yourself back in the day. Was it more of a child’s park, then?

In terms of the place and how much is left; I don’t think there’s much left at all that was obviously part of the park (what I covered is pretty much what there is, as far as I can tell, apart from one tunnel that I didn’t photograph), but there are certainly remnants of it if you know where to look. Given that around the actual hotel area, the vibe was very different to what I imagine Crinkley Bottom would have been (Warner is an adult-only hotel chain… even I at 18 got a few unwelcome stares from many of the hotel guests), with a very relaxed, muted vibe and lots of manicured landscaping, anyone expecting a full-on abandoned Blobby theme park would be disappointed. I was certainly very satisfied with our trip, though; even though Dunblobbin itself was apparently demolished in 2014, there were still some really interesting items left over, particularly once we got away from the main Warner complex!

Although all of the paths we walked on were totally legal, might I add… all of them were public footpaths open to locals and Warner guests, so the law was completely abided by at all times. I just wanted to add that as I know proper urban exploration is technically against the law… every path we walked on was totally public, though. I could never be a true urban explorer…

The Morecambe one resulted in a council funding row that went on for years..."Blobbygate" no less.
Ended up costing £2.5 million in legal fees to the council.
"I thought Morecambe was famous for shrimps, It is now famous for fudge"...Noel Edmonds.
It was in Happy Mount Park, on the site of the derelict Wombles Burrow...I kid you not!

Wow… Morecambe must have been the go-to place for TV theme parks!
(The Wombles was a TV show, right?)

 

[Nitefly]

I think Noel was probably more well known and popular than Ant and Dec are now. This was the era of just four TV channels and no mobile phones. All internet based entertainment was in its infancy (pretty much unknown).

Somehow the erratic, inappropriate and often violent behaviour of Mr. Blobby continues to amuse and bemuse me. It's like this weird one-off anomaly in popular entertainment: a chaos beyond all understanding, nuance and decency. Even in the age of 'moden-internet', it's surprisingly bonkers.

 

[furie]

Wow… Morecambe must have been the go-to place for TV theme parks!
(The Wombles was a TV show, right?)

I'm sure I have a dissertation in me, about the decline of the UK's coastal amusement park industry. A lot of it would centre around places like Morecambe, and about the way the councils completely mishandled their loss of tourists. And yes, The Wombles was a TV show from the 70's (and a firm favourite of mine).

Interesting that it never really registered on the radar of adults like yourself back in the day. Was it more of a child’s park, then?

Definitely. Though to be fair, I've never had any issue with being an "adult" (I was barely an adult when it was open ) and enjoying kid's things. I love Legoland, and I've always had a great deal of affection for visitor attractions showing kid's TV stuff (from Doctor Who to Dangermouse). While Crinkley Bottom only scraped the surface of a very limited number of kid's TV shows (too late for me to be interested in), it would have been very child oriented. Though (as we can see in the clip above), it was hardly ever mature, even when directed towards adults

 

[Sandman]

The Morecambe one resulted in a council funding row that went on for years..."Blobbygate" no less.
Ended up costing £2.5 million in legal fees to the council.
"I thought Morecambe was famous for shrimps, It is now famous for fudge"...Noel Edmonds.
It was in Happy Mount Park, on the site of the derelict Wombles Burrow...I kid you not!

Funnily enough I've just come back from a Sunday stroll in this very park!

 

[Coasterfreck]

This thread brings back a tiny bit of nostalgia, I visited it when it was a wildlife park in probably twice on holidays in Devon between 2006 and 2008. I honestly don’t really remember to much of the attraction minus the miniature railway, which was relatively short, and the only other thing I remember was that on one one of the visits when leaving the road was blocked by a herd of cows.

 

[Serena]

Oh wow, I visited Cricket St Thomas / BlobbyLand when I was a really young, about 4 yrs old I think. I remember The Animals of Farthing Wood stuff, crying in fear when I met Mr Blobby and the safari ride being surprisingly violent.
Thank you for sending me on a trip down memory lane @Matt N! Great report!

 

[Hixee]

Oh wow, I visited Cricket St Thomas / BlobbyLand when I was a really young, about 4 yrs old I think. I remember The Animals of Farthing Wood stuff, crying in fear when I met Mr Blobby and the safari ride being surprisingly violent.

Strangely this is also scarily close to some memories I didn't know I had until I read this.

I read the thread title and thought... "oh, this sounds familiar from somewhere", then looked at the park map and the little flashes came back like something out the Borne movies.

 

[FistedColossus]

Strangely this is also scarily close to some memories I didn't know I had until I read this.

I read the thread title and thought... "oh, this sounds familiar from somewhere", then looked at the park map and the little flashes came back like something out the Borne movies.

I think I may be in this same boat.

For years now I've randomly recalled a safari type ride from when I was younger and for the life of me have never been able to identify it.

@Serena 's description of it being rough has me convinced it must be this one.

Are there any pics or videos of the safari ride? I remember it being stripey, bright coloured vehicles similar to the similar ride at Octopus' Garden at Thorpe.