what happend to sleep hollow?

L

leiclad20

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
Does anyone know what happened to Sleepy Hollow Farm Park? This place started as a simple farm park in the 90's but started to diversify into a seemingly random collection of wild animals and even a got tigers at one point. Their last leaflet in 1999 said they had been forced to relocate due to constant abuse from locals, anyone know where the collection of animals went to and why the new location did not materialise?

Additionally, does anyone know more about the tigers the seem to have dealings with and where they came from/went to?

Looking at google satelite of the site, there appears it has reverted to farm land and no trace it ever existed remains.
 
They had a male Orangutan called Dagu and he now lives at Jersey Zoo and has fathered 3 babies here. I think he also had a short stretch at Dudley Zoo...
 
jerseygorilla said:
They had a male Orangutan called Dagu and he now lives at Jersey Zoo and has fathered 3 babies here. I think he also had a short stretch at Dudley Zoo...
Click to expand...

I don't know where Sleepy Hollow is- Essex? I believe 'Dagu' was owned privately by someone living in Essex for most of his early years- whether this was also the owner of Sleepy Hollow I don't Know or exactly how he came by him as 'Dagu' was born in a European Zoo. He did move briefly to Dudley before going on to Jersey.
 
I remember hearing a keeper describe Dudley as a, 'terrible zoo' when talking to a visitor about Dagu. It sounds like Dudley was a hell of a lot better than where he was before. The link on one of the previous posts seems to say his time at Sleepy Hollow was spent in a small cage at the back of the barn
 
RTB1987 said:
I remember hearing a keeper describe Dudley as a, 'terrible zoo' when talking to a visitor about Dagu. It sounds like Dudley was a hell of a lot better than where he was before. The link on one of the previous posts seems to say his time at Sleepy Hollow was spent in a small cage at the back of the barn
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I reread the Sleepy Hollow thread. I think Dagu may have had a previous home before going there- I believe it was a scrapyard owner or something similar- but his accomodation at Sleepy Hollow sounds very bad too.

He only spent a short time at Dudley Zoo, perhaps a few months, before moving to Jersey- he was about 10 years old by then.
 
'Dagu' was formally called 'Clyde' and was indeed kept by a private owner-a gentleman in essex. He was very tame and aparantly used to sit down at the table with his former owners for tea before moving to Sleepy Hollow!

After numerous problems with licensing and planning with the local council in Gloucestershire the owner of SH (Tim Spittle) did briefly reinvent the zoo at the former National Shire Horse Centre in Devon-but this was a short lived venture only surviving one season.

Other animals they had at SH included a hand reared Jaguar, Lynx, Coatis, Lemurs, Porcupine, otters and many more. Alot of the larger exotic animals were kept off show and others were bought in specifically for advertised days or weekends (i.e big cats, crocodiles, and wolves were supplied for some of these days) I think this was a way around the licensing problems.

Ironically when the Shire Horse Centre venture finally folded many animals went to Dartmoor which had been a fierce competetor of the new venture! Some animals also went to porfell animal land in cornwall
 
jacks zoo said:
'Dagu' was formally called 'Clyde' and was indeed kept by a private owner-a gentleman in essex. He was very tame and aparantly used to sit down at the table with his former owners for tea before moving to Sleepy Hollow!
Click to expand...

Dagu's history according to Studbook;

Born at Dresden Zoo 1985
Transferred to 'Rushden' (UK animal dealer). 1988
Transferred to 'B. Hewlett' (Essex?) later same year(88).
(Transfer to 'Sleepy Hollow'/owner not recorded.)
Transfer to Dudley August 1997.
Transfer to Jersey. March 1998.

It was possible for the original private owner to obtain him because he had been sent to an animal dealer. He was obviously very humanised- in the case of a male Gorilla or Chimpanzee this would have seriously affected his later breeding potential- however Orangutans do seem much more 'resiliant' in that respect and despite his background Dagu has proved to be a perfectly normal (breeding) male at Jersey.
 
Dagu used to be in adverts (as Clyde) I believed this to be in Germany...could this instead have been in Essex??
 
It must have been, he was only three years old when he was moved to the UK. He had a pretty bad history before finally moving to Jersey. It seems that Dresden Zoo just got rid of him.
 
Hi guys, Sorry to bump an ancient post but I would like to offer to local insight about sleepy hollow,
I live in a small village very close to Blockley and my gran owns a farmland property in Blockley with sheep (I'll get to why the sheep are relevant in a bit) that borders the woods in Blockley, I was wondering if anyone would know how to find a full list of animals that were kept there, whether those animals were ever officially on the books, and what actually happened to the animals when the park closed?

There is a lot of rumors and speculation in the area amongst locals about the animals, with quite a few claiming to have seen a "panther/big cat/big black cat" in the surrounding woods since the closure of the park, some even go as far to say the Blockley woods have beasts in them and you should never go in there alone.

I want to know what happened to the animals, specifically predatory animals like the hand-reared Jaguar they had, to rule out the possibility they escaped or were possibly released by the owner to avoid either; the animals being put down because they couldn't be rehomed or didn't have official paperwork/fines or prosecution due to improper licensing.

Now for the sheep, last night my gran found a carcass of one of her sheep, we know which sheep it was and despite being one of the older Shetlands, it was still a strong, healthy and stubborn ewe that lambed a few months earlier. The carcass had almost been picked clean and some of the bones had been significantly gnawed, with tooth marks that seemed to be bigger than any fox or dog. One of the legs was badly broken and apparently had been dislocated with some force, Her lamb has also disappeared without a trace.

Something had taken down, killed and eaten the bulk of the ewe in a single night, granted there are Foxes, Ravens, and other carrion animals in the area and surrounding woods but nothing with the physicality or temperament to hunt, kill and eat a healthy adult ewe and possibly her lamb.

So what I'm asking is, How plausible is it that one of these big cats is not only still alive, obviously that would make it an extremely old big cat (assuming there wasn't a breeding pair or an interspecies hybrid), but actively hunting and killing livestock under the cover of darkness before returning to the dense woods where nobody goes?

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http://www.cmis.cotswold.gov.uk/CMIS5/Document.ashx?czJKcaeAi5tUFL1DTL2UE4zNRBcoShgo=ROxsNuUojYcRDRpG6x1ZOf2Zpmbp0OTw0vMSVmIQfb6NY6LxkvxSuQ==&mCTIbCubSFfXsDGW9IXnlg===hFflUdN3100=&kCx1AnS9/pWZQ40DXFvdEw===hFflUdN3100=&uJovDxwdjMPoYv+AJvYtyA===ctNJFf55vVA=&FgPlIEJYlotS+YGoBi5olA===NHdURQburHA=&d9Qjj0ag1Pd993jsyOJqFvmyB7X0CSQK=ctNJFf55vVA=&WGewmoAfeNR9xqBux0r1Q8Za60lavYmz=ctNJFf55vVA=&WGewmoAfeNQ16B2MHuCpMRKZMwaG1PaO=ctNJFf55vVA=

This document (dated 28th August 1988)says the owner applied for permission to house 7 big cats, permission was denied, but he was found to have continued anyway, and the big cats may have been there for 3 years on site permanently. The document specifically mentions a young tiger, two pumas, a jaguar and two mature tigers, that were unlicensed being kept in small areas.

It says zoo inspectors said the interior barn where the animals were kept was too small and they need to be moved to field outside. it also says the owner had an interest and desire to breed the big cats, but he lacks the accreditation and facilities to do so, but this does suggest the pair of Pumas and Tigers may have been breeding pairs, so if they escaped there could possibly be a small population of them in the woodland.

Page 91, section 30 talks about the issue of the unauthorized animals (the big cats), while cared for in an acceptable manner, being kept in enclosures that were too small for their needs.

The overall appeal against the rejection of planning permission and to keep exotic animals was denied.

http://www.cmis.cotswold.gov.uk/CMI...WGewmoAfeNQ16B2MHuCpMRKZMwaG1PaO=ctNJFf55vVA=

Dated 25th March 1999; Page 41, Section 50 talks about assurances from the owner that the unlicensed big cats would be removed within 4 weeks.

So what happened to the animals, did he release them? Otherwise, correct me if I'm wrong, there should be records of what happened to the animals and where they were moved to.
 
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