Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags
And grinning in their sleep.
Bats!
D. H. Lawrence
WHEN Lauren Smart drove from London to view a dilapidated 18th-century farmhouse for sale near Charlbury, in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, it was love at first sight. ‘I knew it would be a money pit, but I had to have it,’ she admits. What she didn’t know was that a roost of brown long-eared bats was already ensconced in the roof and pipistrelles had requisitioned a gable end.
Before the Smarts could submit plans to renovate the house and convert the barn next door, a compulsory survey revealed that both roosts contained female bats with babies. All bats are protected by law, but maternity colonies have a high conservation value, returning to the same roost each summer to have their young: ‘We were told that we couldn’t touch the roof or the loft space until we’d provided alternative accommodation for them,’ Mrs Smart explains.
The first task was to convert the
