photo by Stella Daniella, with permission
Just a few miles from Petroglyphs Provincial Park and Serpent Mounds Park near Peterborough, Ontario is the Indian River Reptile Zoo. Fans of snakes, lizards, alligators and turtles flock here for cold-blooded fun AND to pose for pictures at Stonehenge. Why Stonehenge at a reptile zoo? We’d love to know!
It’s sort of a funny replica, from what we can see, with some elements that suggest one of the stone circles at Calanish, and lintels on some of the other stones. But quirkiness can generate druids here at the Clonehenge blog as long as it is not the kind that makes us slap our foreheads.
Its proximity to a famous petroglyph site and the notable Serpent Mound complex (not to be confused with its more renowned Ohio counterpart) intrigues us. The Paju City Stonehenge, too, is near ancient megalithic sites. Near Clonehenge headquarters there is a similar situation with modern megaliths erected in a place surrounded by prehistoric stonework. It brings up a favourite question: do some landscapes speak to our subconcious minds and urge us to do this sort of thing? But, hey, our job here is just to score. We’re giving this thing 7 druids because—reptiles and Stonehenge–random much?
Later note–received this in an email from Edward Loyst: “You asked why a Stonehenge at a reptile Zoo…Well here are the facts. The Indian River Reptile Zoo is my son’s creation. he designed the state of the art building and safe climate controlled facilities exclusively for reptiles. Bryont has now been Curator of this CAZA accredited zoo for 10 years.The zoo is located on 36 acres near Peterborough Ontario and features indoor and outdoor exhibits of snakes turtles lizards and alligators…. as well as an educational lecture centre and a 2km nature trail. The Standing stones as we call them are my creation . My son made the mistake of allowing me to design the picnic area and when he was busy worrying about building a modern reptile zoo I went to a granite quarry 30km away and trucked in several (10) truck loads of giant slabs (stones up to 7tons each) of Belmont Pink Granite and planted them in the picnic area.People love the stones and the good part is there are a dozen more megalithic stones still to be planted. This is all part of my master plan to build a botanical garden with pathways wandering by the stones and flowers. I will send you new pictures later this year when the next section is complete.”
He included a website, a page of which has pictures of megalithia, including a trilithon. And some things that look a lot like Easter Island moai. Thank you! We look forward to those pictures and will do a separate post when we receive them.
This Druids’ or Druid’s Temple stands near Ilton in Yorkshire, and is an oval rather than a circle, looking more like a ruined longbarrow than a henge, but we include it because of the builder’s intent. You can read a little of its story here, and more pictures here. It has an altar stone, a heel stone, and other megalithic paraphernalia associated with it.
CLONEHENGE 