3 centuries of animals in the big top

THE Chipperfields’ history of animal training goes back more than 300 years.

Thomas’s ancestor James Chipperfield introduced performing exotic animals to Britain, exhibiting them on the frozen Thames at the Frost Fair in 1684.

In the 1 50s, Chipperfield’s Circus was the biggest in Europe, with a tent that seated 6,000 and animals including polar bears and chimps.

Thomas’s great-uncle Jimmy Chipperfield created safari parks including Longleat in Wiltshire, Woburn in Bedfordshire and Knowsley, Merseyside.

He last performed with big cats in 2015 in Wales at ‘An Evening with Lions and Tigers’. He told the Daily Telegraph: ‘You can’t afford to mistreat a lion or tiger, because eventually they will turn.

‘They will realise they are a lot stronger, faster and more dangerous than you, and it can only end very badly.’