Pest Control in Radstock

Radstock is a former mining town in the Somer valley, about eight miles south-west of Bath. The coal industry that once drove the town has long gone but the legacy of mining remains in the landscape. The terraced streets that housed pit workers still line the hillsides and the layout of the town follows the narrow valley bottom with housing climbing steeply on both sides. These terraced rows along Waterloo Road, Wells Hill and the Frome Road are where most of our mouse control work takes place. Shared walls, limited cavity space and old stonework with gaps around gas and water pipes give mice a direct route from one house to the next. Treating one property in a terrace often means the neighbours need attention too.

The Somer runs through the valley and past the town centre and like most watercourses in Somerset it brings rat activity along its banks. The old railway path and the green corridor running through the centre of Radstock provide cover for rats to move between the water and the residential streets above. The lower-lying properties near the old station site and along the Frome Road are the ones most likely to report rats in their gardens. Drainage in the older parts of town is another factor, as some of the original pipework in the terraces has never been replaced and cracked drains give rats an underground route straight into buildings.

The surrounding countryside is hilly and green, with farms and smallholdings close to the edges of town. This means rural pest pressure is always in the background, with field mice and rats moving into Radstock from the hedgerows and field boundaries as the seasons change. Wasp removal keeps us busy through the summer, with nests regularly turning up in the loft spaces of terraced houses and in the garden walls and sheds that line the hillside plots behind many of Radstock's homes.