The £346million theme park that wanted to be 'England's Disneyland' - but was never built

Daily Mail​

23-04-2025

If Brits want to go to Disneyland, they need to travel to Paris, at the very least – but the UK almost had a rival theme park built in the 1980s.
Called WonderWorld, the park was granted planning permission in 1981 to be built on Priors Hall Park, a 1,000-acre disused quarry, around two miles from Corby, Northamptonshire.
The ambitious £346 million project promised a British answer to Disney World's Epcot, which opened to the public in Orlando in 1982.
Like Epcot, the attraction was to include 13 themed villages built around a central bowl, measuring 700m in diameter.
Six of these areas were due to open in the summer of 1992, and were expected to welcome four million visitors a year.
WonderWorld would also be home to high-tech rides, including one designed by Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, which would take riders on a canoe through the human body.
If the park had opened, there would have been an open-air concert hall designed to look like one of the Martian tripods from Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds and a 10,000-seat sports stadium.
Meanwhile, botanist David Bellamy was helping to plan a mock safari and astronomer Sir Patrick Moore was involved in creating an observatory.
There would also be educational centres, themed restaurants, a conservation area and lots of places to shop.
The theme park was only going to be the start of the resort too, as seven hotels were due to be built, as well as an 18-hole golf course, and 100 villas.
The overall ambition was to launch a new leisure industry built around 'British heritage, folklore, science and innovation'.
In 1985, one of the architects, Derek Walker, told the BBC: 'The basic ingredients [for WonderWorld] are very simple: entertainment at the very highest level. It's participatory and it's incredibly educational.
'[WonderWorld] will offer the best of British design.'
The project was estimated to cost £346million in total and aimed for an initial opening in 1985.
And Group Five, who were due to be the developers, even had support from the local area including county authorities and the Commission for New Towns.
However, due to rising costs, planning delays and difficulty securing long-term funding, some of the backers pulled out.
The plans eventually faded into obscurity and a large WonderWorld sign and a small wooden cabin were the only two parts of the entire resort that were built.
There are now more than 1,000 houses where WonderWorld was meant to stand and there are plans to build around 5,000 more in the future.
And, while WonderWorld didn't succeed, a huge new Universal theme park is officially set to open in Bedford in 2031 - after a deal was closed by the Government.
The Bedfordshire attraction will be one of the largest and most advanced theme parks in Europe, with a 500-room hotel and a retail and entertainment complex planned along with the theme park.