10,000 churches damaged by bat plague

A RECORD-breaking plague of bats is causing severe damage to nearly 10,000 of the country’s ancient churches.

Infestations are so heavy at 120 sites that officials fear that soon they may no longer be able to hold services, and at least two have already been abandoned.

The bats leave floors and walls caked with corrosive droppings and urine, but as endangered species they cannot be driven out of their roosting spots. The Church of England estimates that 60 per cent of its 16,000 churches have bats – about 3,000 more than in the last study in the late 1990s.

Andrew Selous, a Tory MP and a Church Estates Commissioner, revealed in a Parliamentary answer that about 120 churches are ‘struggling with unsustainable bat roosts’.

To combat the urgent problem, the Church has launched a project called Bats In Churches in collaboration with the Bat Conservation Trust and with a £3.8 million boost from the National Heritage Lottery Fund.

It is a five-year project, staffed by ecologists, church architects and heritage experts. Lamorran church, near Truro, and St Lawrence at Radstone, Northamptonshire, have stopped functioning because of bats, said Bats In Churches spokeswoman Ione Bingley.

She added: ‘Some have all but closed down officially.’ The bats also caused chaos at 800-year-old All Saints Church, in Braunston-in-Rutland in the East Midlands.

Church warden Sue Willetts said she and colleagues would spend 90 minutes cleaning before events. She added: ‘We had bat droppings and urine on the floor and walls and in the font, and the pungent smell of ammonia. Worshippers started avoiding the church.’