36 CONTEXT 180 : JUNE 2024 to support churches dealing with bats 4. A research programme, Church Bat Detectives, at three engagement levels to enable broad participation and contribute to national understanding 5. Partnership across heritage and ecological bodies to demonstrate success, train architects and ecologists, and build local relationships to replace entrenched suspicions. Bats in Churches brought the bat and building communities together, listened to their genuine frustrations and pooled their respective commitment to the benefit of wildlife, people and historic places. Working and learning together resulted in relationships and mutual respect, new shared ventures and, incredibly, fun. Case study 1: Heritage A maternity roost of Natterer’s bats roosted throughout St Margaret, Saxlingham, Norfolk. It was one of the most severely impacted churches in the project, prevented from carrying out any activities in the summer. After full bat surveys, the initial plan was to contain the bats in a large ‘bat loft’ space around their main access point in the south transept. However, this transept was home to the organ, which limited the amount of void space that could be created and made access difficult. The architect and ecologist designed an alternative bat loft around a secondary access point in the north transept, already partly screened off to form the vestry, with ample space above. A ceiling was installed over the vestry and the screen extended to fill the transept arch, enclosing the bats. A door allows access for cleaning and monitoring. Once the bats had acclimatised to the loft, known bat access points into the church were blocked. In the first year of exclusion the church was clean and bat-free for the first time in years. Saxlingham shows that major capital works can be successful and discreet, if they are designed by ecologist, community and architect working closely together. The bat loft has changed the appearance of the church interior, but it was sensitively designed to match existing furnishings and is completely in keeping with the rest of the church. Case study 2: Engagement St Peter’s Church, Wintringham,Yorkshire is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. It is popular with walkers and visitors, but when it joined the Bats in Churches project it was cared for by just two volunteers. With large colonies of Natterer’s bats, pipistrelles and brown long-eared bats, keeping it clean and welcoming was a huge challenge. There was limited scope for capital works, so the focus was on community engagement and increasing the number of active volunteers. For the first time, in 2022 the church held three roost counts for the National Bat Monitoring Programme with the local bat group. As well as counting bats, the focus was on creating a community event attended by children and families, with food and drink provided. By the third night over 30 people attended. These social and community occasions also provided valuable survey data for the church. The pulling power of bats means that local people have rediscovered the church and its potential as a community space. The church has been revitalised for Easter and Christmas and joined the North Yorkshire Summer of Culture with a storyteller, a choir and two poets showing the adaptability of the space. It is the permanent home of the project’s artwork ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’. There is now a friends group of around 35 volunteers, all actively involved in running events and cleaning the church. Case study 3: Volunteering St Edmund’s Church in Egleton, Rutland, is a Grade I-listed church with a long history of housing bats, but over a nine-year period the numbers of soprano pipistrelles in the maternity roost increased significantly, with over 1,000 individuals present before pups were born. Roosting in the nave roof void, bats were accessing the interior of the church through small gaps and a sizeable hole in the ceiling where plaster had fallen off. This led to large amounts of droppings and urine scattered around the church, an overpowering smell and Bats in Churches commissioned the artist and photographer Ilene Sterns to create ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’, an artwork celebrating the relationship between bats and churches. The installation has a permanent home at St Peter’s, Winteringham. Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the financial support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Natural England. The partners are grateful to all those involved, including the project team, architects, ecologists, volunteers and, most of all, the congregations.
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