Butterflies

Williamson Park in Lancaster is a wonderful place to visit with its 54 acres of parkland, woodland walks and sublime views to Morecambe Bay and the Lake District mountains. The Ashton Memorial is beautiful. Unfortunately the cafe at the top is closed for the time being but there are food outlets. Luckily the problems do not extend to the building next to it.

Formerly an Edwardian palm house, the Butterfly House is now a home to Koi carp, terrapins and caterpillars. I prefer to visit in the winter when you can step from cold to very, very warm in a few steps. From Lancashire to the deepest tropics in its trees, twisting vines and waterfalls.

Butterfly House, Williamson Park in Lancaster

And Butterflies. A slow walk amongst some of the world’s most wonderful butterfly species, including the blue morpho, emerald swallowtails and camouflaged owl butterflies. It’s impossible not to take a seat and absorb the special atmosphere. You can view it all from above by way of the twisting staircases to the balconies.

At times you can see butterfly pupae emerging in their glass display case. Learn about the diet and lifecycle of a butterfly from the information boards or talk or listen to one of zoo keepers telling the life story of a butterfly.

I can remember stories about hot houses and conservatories but not actually Butterfly Houses and it seems that the first version of the butterfly house was demonstrated in Guernsey in 1976, when people were invited by businessman David Lowe to walk through a humid greenhouse filled with plants and exotic creatures.

Inside Williamson Park Butterfly House

This idea was taken to the next level by lepidopterist (the term for a person who studies butterflies and moths) Clive Ferrel in 1980, when he set up the London Butterfly House, the first ever entertainment-focused installation which ran from 1981 to 2007. Ferrel went on to establish butterfly farming facilities in places like Costa Rica and Malaysia throughout the mid-1980s, which, according to a study in Conservation and Society, is what really got the attractions off the ground.

From what I can see there are now seventeen Butterfly Houses in the UK.

Nowadays, butterfly houses appear worldwide—from Missouri to Austria and even the Singapore airport—often attached to museums and botanical gardens. Some make their home old buildings; the Schmetterlinghaus in Vienna is part of a 200-year-old group of structures and gardens. While larger, newer facilities has space for even more butterflies; Stockholm’s Fjarilshuset, for instance, holds more than 700 kinds of butterflies in a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse.

Caligo Eurilochus (the owl butterfly from above)

Much to my surprise there are people who suffer from a fear of butterflies. Nicole Kidman isn’t scared of snakes. The Oscar-winning actress is one who has a deep fear of butterflies and moths, a condition known as lepidopterophobia.

She has said that as a child growing up in Australia, she would go to great spans to avoid them. ‘Sometimes when I would come home from school, the biggest butterfly or moth you’d ever seen would be just sitting on our front gate.’ She would climb over the fence, crawl around to the side of the house – anything to avoid having to go through the front gate.

There doesn’t seem to be one separate list of Butterfly Houses in the UK. You can find a list embedded in wiki under Butterfly Houses.

Incidentally, I do think a better name for butterflies is flutterbies.

Butterfly House, Lancaster

On the balcony it was even hotter,
sweat trickling
to the rhythm of piped water
oozing into humid air,
down and around
Oleander and Amorylis,
the Morpho Peleides
and the school trip
watching motionless
as vivid tattoos
on the arm of the Keeper
rose and fell
telling the six month story
of her butterflies,
slowly drawing them in,
an artist,
leaving the Owl till last,
Caligo Eurilochus,
the size of a book.
Seven year olds hid behind hats
while behind the Citrus Tree
I edged down the spiral staircase
absurdly pleased at the show
but also wanting a few minutes alone
in this nave of green stained glass
and its spectral flock.

Until I saw the terrapins,
two grey creatures
shuffling down a channel.
Forty years of crawling
up a red brick channel.

I sat on a bench after the children left,
not moving much, thought flitting.
Rock stars, Keats, Dylan,
Einstein, time, age,
too quick to settle
on the wings of a notebook,
so I left it closed,
a pupae hanging down,
ready to emerge in the café outside.

First published in ‘away’, circa 2010

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.