page_title: Chipperfield's Circus
section_title: Jimmy Chipperfield
hierarchical_section_title: Chipperfield's Circus / Jimmy Chipperfield
caption_attribution_description: English: Longleat Railway - No.6 John Hayton climbing the bank http://longleat-railway.com/
context_page_description: Chipperfield's Circus is a long-running British family touring show, continuing a 300-year-old family business.
  Chipperfield's Circus started with James Chipperfield with his performing animals at the Thames Frost Fair of 1684. Through the 19th century, the circus toured all of England, with a menagerie of animals, teams of acrobats and clowns. After World War II, under the management of Jimmy Chipperfield, the circus became one of the biggest in Europe, with a tent that could hold 6000 people. The family in the same headship diversified into safari parks and supplying fairgrounds supplies, and since his death in 1990, the circus has toured only intermittently, sometimes featuring members of the extended Chipperfield family.
context_section_description: Jimmy Chipperfield, "James Seaton Methuen Chipperfield" (1912-1990), was born in 1912 while Chipperfield's Circus was touring. His family owned and performed in the family Circus as clowns, acrobats and the animal trainers. Jimmy learned all the trades of the Circus. Jimmy married Rosie Purchase (1912–2006) in the early 1930. Rosies family had a traveling menagerie show of wild animals. After Rosie's father was killed by one of his lions, Jimmy took over the Purchase's show and merged it with the Chipperfield Circus. He took the circus on local and oversea tours. Jimmy began a bear wrestling show. The second world war closed down Jimmy's show. Jimmy signed up to be a fighter pilot for the RAF. After the war he put the show back together and made it bigger and made it shine. By April 1946 the Chipperfield circus was back on tour in the UK.  In 1955 Jimmy broke away from the family circus and after a brief time farming and managing other shows, he and daughter Mary began providing animals for film work.
  In the 1960s he started making a career in "drive-through" safari parks. In 1966 he opened the Longleat Safari Park. In 1967 Jimmy opened the Johannesburg Lion Park, the third lion park in the world. Chipperfield had Larenty circus family manage the park. Jimmy opened the Windsor Safari Park in Windsor, Berkshire in 1969. In 1970 he helped start the Woburn Safari Park with John Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford and also a park in Stirling, Scotland, the Blair Drummond Safari Park at the Blair Drummond House. In 1971 he helped open the Knowsley Safari Park  Jimmy Chipperfield and Annabel Lambton opened the Lambton Lion Park at Lambton Castle in July 1972, closed in 1980.  Jimmy opened his West Midland Safari Park on 17 April 1973. The Windsor park closed in 1992 and lions there were moved to the West Midlands Safari Park. According to his autobiography, "My Wild Life", he pioneered the entire idea and among his first groups of animals was the lions featured in Born Free.
  Jimmy provided and trained pets and circus animals for Hollywood movies, like Walt Disney. 
  Jimmy Chipperfield was a subject of the This Is Your Life in 1961, and a photograph of him with Eamonn Andrews is featured in the collage of photographs on the first edition dust jacket of his autobiography. In 1979 Jimmy open a show called Circus World that toured and set up in the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome.
  All four of the Chipperfield siblings, Dick, Jimmy, Marjorie and John who were responsible for the circus's greatest successes died: Marjorie died 1975, John died in 1978 and Jimmy died in 1990.
caption: Longleat Safari Park opened by Jimmy Chipperfield in 1966, the first drive-through safari park outside Africa
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