Drayton Manor is a theme park and zoo in the grounds of the former Drayton Manor, in Drayton Bassett, Staffordshire, England, UK. The park covers 280 acres of which about 113 acres are in use and hosts about 1.5 million people each year.
The land on which the theme park was built on once belonged to the Peel family, but the mansion, built in 1835, had been reduced to ruins by 1926. The British Army requisitioned it as a training post during World War II. After the war, entrepreneurs George and Vera Bryan borrowed ?6,000 and bought the land (and the 17 huts that the army had constructed during their stay). In 1949, they opened a small amusement park with just a handful of children’s rides. In 1954, Mrs Molly Badham,who later opened the nearby Twycross Zoo, joined forces with the Bryans and opened a small zoo to complement the amusement park. The amusement park grew slowly in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, but in the late 1980s, the park began to install bigger and more thrilling rides to attract customers from all over the United Kingdom. Drayton Manor Theme Park is today the fifth most popular theme park in the UK and is still managed by Colin Bryan.