Edwin Pentland Hick (21 July 1919 – 6 March 2016) was a British entrepreneur, author, publisher, and veteran of World War II.
After World War II, he left the army and returned to his hometown of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, where he was given shares in the failing Aberdeen Walk Picture House when his father, a solicitor, was able to arrange for a client to grant a mortgage for it.
[4] The Aberdeen Picture House is now a furniture store, with the original name still visible in stone relief along the front.
In 1959 Hick sold the cinema chain and bought a bankrupt country club on 9 acres (36,000 m2) of land in the Ryedale district and named it the Yorkshire Zoological Gardens.
Associated Pleasure Parks was then taken over by a larger company (Scotia Leisure) which shortly afterward collapsed in an embezzlement scandal, leaving Hick broke.