TREETOPS SAFARI

Year Published: 1950s

Format: 16mm

Description: Join this channel to get access to perks: / @periscopefilm Want to learn more about Periscope Film and get access to exclusive swag? Join us on Patreon. Visit / periscopefilm This film "Treetrops Safari" was the official film of the Treetops Lodge aka the Treetops Hotel. It was created by Geoff A. Mason-Smith who, along with his wife Joan, ran the lodge in the 1950s and 60s. Treetops was located in Aberdare National Park in Kenya near the township of Nyeri. It was created by Major Eric Sherbrooke Walker, who built a treehouse for his wife Lady Bettie in 1932 in a 300-year-old fig tree next to a watering hole. As you can see in the film, the lodge offered guests a close view of the local wildlife. The original building was burned down during the 1954 Mau Mau Uprising, but the hotel was rebuilt and eventually grew into a 35-room hotel. The hotel is the location where Princess Elizabeth was staying in 1952 when she acceded to the thrones of the United Kingdom, and the other Commonwealth realms, upon the death of her father, King George VI. Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts movement, was a resident of Nyeri and a frequent visitor to Treetops. The film, which likely dates to the late 1950s or early 1960s, shows many aspects of the Treetops experience, with guests arriving at the lodge by car and being completely isolated in the treehouse hotel, while wild animals roam just below them in the adjacent watering hole. At 2:49, the plaque commemorating the succession of Queen Elizabeth is shown.

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