Beaver Water World Walkthrough

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Beaver Water World is a very small zoo located in Kent. It is largely a rescue centre with lots of rescued birds and reptiles that are ex-pets. The signage is general was awful with many incorrectly signed things, many signs which were just marker pens on reptile tanks and there were lots of unsigned animals – especially in the bird aviaries where less than half of the animals were signed. The enclosure quality was poor overall; I would say they were all the bare minimum that could be considered acceptable. This is probably the closest place I have heard of in the UK to the roadside zoos of the US.

Beaver Water World is located in the Kent countryside, near to the village of Tatsfield. When you drive up, you see a road sign for ‘Reptile Zoo’ which points you down a tiny road where you come to the car park for a motorcycle shop, an aquarium shop and Beaver Water World.

To access the zoo, you have to go into the aquarium shop which isn’t part of the zoo and you come to a little stand located inside the aquarium shop at the entrance to a passageway leading into Beaver Water World. This is where ‘tickets’ (the ‘tickets’ are actually just small stickers) are purchased for £5 for adults or £4 for children. You go into the passageway and come into the reptile area. It’s rather dark and small, and is made up of one central passageway going straight through and out of the reptile building with three passageways leading going off to dead ends.

After leaving the rather dingy reptile area you come out into the open in an area holding meerkats and formerly and American Alligator. You go through that area and into the main bit of the zoo where you see a small enclosure for a mallard and Indian Runner duck on your left and a reptile room that is only accessible to the keepers on your right, as well as a very small enclosure for tortoises and the main beaver pool straight ahead, this area is pictured below. I have a picture of each of the individual enclosures in the gallery, if people would like to look further.

You turn around a corner, past the duck enclosure and come up to a small beaver enclosure just home to one individual and a red squirrel enclosure next door. You then go down through a little pathway between a muntjac enclosure and the main beaver pool.

Before coming to the largest portion of the zoo where there are enclosures for raccoons, meerkats, harvest mice, a small play area, a koi pond and a duck pond on the left; and enclosures for a Crow, Cotton-top Tamarins, and Pygmy Marmosets on the right.



And there are enclosures going all the way down to the end with a small, separate section leading off from there with aviaries signed for rehabilitating birds.

You can then exit from here or go back around and go back out through the reptile building and aquarium shop.

And that’s all there is to it. I spent just over an hour there, though the place could fairly easily be seen in 45 minutes or you could spend more there, though I’d be very bored by the two hour mark. I would recommend a visit if you have a spare hour or so and are in the area, though I wouldn’t go much out of the way for it. So it’s not a fantastic place, I wouldn’t even call it average, but I enjoyed my short visit.

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