page_title: York Museum Gardens
section_title: Animals
hierarchical_section_title: York Museum Gardens / Description / Animals
caption_attribution_description: Eichhörnchen im Museumspark von York.
context_page_description: The York Museum Gardens are botanic gardens in the centre of York, England, beside the River Ouse. They cover an area of 10 acres of the former grounds of St Mary's Abbey, and were created in the 1830s by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society along with the Yorkshire Museum which they contain.
  The gardens are held in trust by the City of York Council and are managed by the York Museums Trust. They were designed in a gardenesque style by landscape architect Sir John Murray Naysmith, and contain a variety of species of plants, trees and birds. Admission is free. A variety of events take place in the gardens, such as open-air theatre performances and festival activities.
  There are several historic buildings in the gardens. They contain the remains of the west corner of the Roman fort of Eboracum, including the Multangular Tower and parts of the Roman walls. In the same area there is also the Anglian Tower, which was probably built into the remains of a late Roman period fortress. During the Middle Ages, the tower was expanded and the Roman walls were incorporated into York's city walls.
context_section_description: The gardens are home to a population of semi-tame grey squirrels and many species of birds. A 1970 report covering the period 1965-1969 listed the vertebrates resident in the gardens at that time: Common wood pigeon, Tawny owl, Blue tit, Eurasian Wren, Dunnock, European Robin, European greenfinch, Mistle thrush, Song thrush, Blackbird, and House sparrow, Common shrew, Wood mouse, and Brown rat.
  In the early 19th century, the gardens included a menagerie. Henry Baines' daughter, Fanny, recalled 70 years later that in this period the menageries contained a bear, a golden eagle, and several monkeys, amongst other animals. In 1831, a bear from the menagerie got loose in the gardens and reportedly chased the Keeper of the Yorkshire Museum, John Phillips, and Reverend Harcourt into an outbuilding. The bear was subsequently sent to London Zoo.
  Until 2006 a family of peacocks had been in residence for at least 70 years.
  In 2012 the gardens was one of the release sites for a new population of the endangered Tansy beetle and, as of 2015, is one of the best places to see them in the wild.
caption: A garden visitor hand-feeding a grey squirrel
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