Pest Control in Chinnor

Chinnor is a large village at the foot of the Chiltern Hills in south Oxfordshire, sitting where the chalk escarpment drops down to the flat clay vale below. This boundary between two types of landscape creates interesting pest dynamics. The older part of the village around the church and the High Street has brick and flint cottages typical of the Chilterns and the flint walls with their lime mortar joints provide mice with entry points as the mortar wears away. The chalk soil drains quickly, but where the ground meets the clay vale at the base of the escarpment there are damper conditions that rats prefer.

The village has grown a lot with modern housing estates on the flat ground below the hills and these newer properties see plenty of mouse activity through their cavity walls and air bricks. The Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway runs along the foot of the escarpment through the village and the embankments and cuttings of the old line provide cover for rats and mice. The cement works that operated here for decades has closed but the disturbed ground around the site supports rough grassland and scrub that is home to field mice and voles.

The Chiltern beechwoods that rise steeply behind the village are home to grey squirrels that regularly come down into gardens and sometimes get into loft spaces in the houses closest to the hillside. Wasp nests are common throughout the village during summer, found in roof spaces, under tiles and in the old flint walls. The farmland surrounding Chinnor on the vale side supports rats and mice that move closer to the village after harvest and the allotments and garden boundaries provide stepping stones for these animals to move from the open fields into the built-up area.