Pudsey Park Glasshouse (The Really Wild Café)

Pudsey Park is a 7.5-hectare municipal park run by Leeds City Council. The West Leeds Country Park Visitor Centre, which held animal enclosures, aviaries and aquariums, came with a glasshouse. According to the press, residents had fond memories of exploring the tropical ecosystems it held.

The centre and the glasshouse closed in 2020, with the Covid-19 restrictions, and did not reopen: savings of 90,000 pounds a year were identified in 2021. A consultation in late 2020 drew 2,035 responses, at least 85 per cent of them against permanent closure. Wikipedia dates the closure of the centre to April 2021.

On 3 February 2026 the press reported the application by Junglebox Ltd, run by three directors, for a cafe and a "jungle classroom". The planning officer's report records 69 letters of support and no objections; the scheme was approved in March, and work began the same month by clearing the most overgrown plants. A full opening planned for 10 July was pushed back to September; only the cafe opened, in mid-July.

The written sources speak of a "glasshouse" or "greenhouse" without describing its structure: no materials, dimensions or plan are published. A Geograph photograph of May 2024 and a West Leeds Dispatch photograph of April 2026 show a long building with walls of glazed panels in metal frames on a plinth, a pitched roof and a glazed entrance porch bearing the sign "GLASSHOUSE". The OpenStreetMap outline shows it as a building separate from the former visitor centre, about thirty metres away. The whole sits in the Pudsey Conservation Area, and the planning officer's report judges that the works will enhance the appearance of the building.

What the documents mostly describe is the conversion. The company asked the council to carry out repairs to make the building watertight and sought a rent-free period of three years to pay for an upgrade of the insulation and heating. The change-of-use permission covers a cafe in part of the glasshouse only. In one half of the space the operators have built a snaking 42-metre fish tank. At the centre of the planned rainforest, a clearing is meant to serve as a classroom, the Rainforest Classroom.

After six years without regular care, the state of the plants is uneven. At the entrance many specimens died of heat in the summer of 2025; in the main tropical house some survived and are to be kept, while paths and plantings will be altered.

The project file envisages planting exotic rainforest trees with fruit bats, birds, lizards and other species flying or roaming free; the company speaks of Central American rainforest flora and fauna designed for school groups. What is already in place in 2026 is tropical planting in the cafe area, which a Jungle Explorer sheet invites visitors to identify, and the fish tank, for which a delivery of fish from Colombia was expected in late July.

The glasshouse stands in Pudsey Park, a public park that also has a playground, a skate park and a bowling green. The cafe reopened part of the glasshouse in mid-July 2026; the rainforest and the zoo in the former visitor centre close by are still being fitted out. Entry to the rainforest is meant to be free for the first year after it opens, according to the company's crowdfunding page.

The full opening of the zoo, first announced for July and then September, is not confirmed by an official source (the crowdfunding page says late 2026): it is wise to check progress before travelling, because the programme is still changing. The park, the second most visited in Leeds after Roundhay Park according to Wikipedia, is easy to stroll before or after a coffee in the glasshouse.