Pest Control in Chipping Norton

Chipping Norton is the highest town in Oxfordshire, sitting on a hilltop in the north Cotswolds with wide views across the rolling countryside. The town has a handsome centre around the Market Place with stone buildings that give it a classic Cotswold feel and these older properties bring the pest problems you would expect from buildings of their age. The limestone walls develop gaps as the soft mortar wears away and mice find their way through openings that are barely wider than a finger. The old coaching inns, converted workshops and the buildings along West Street and High Street have cellars and hidden spaces that mice use for nesting through the colder months.

The Bliss Tweed Mill at the bottom of the valley below town is one of the most photographed buildings in the Cotswolds and the valley floor around it with its stream and mature trees creates good habitat for rats. The watercourse running through the valley provides a corridor that rats follow up toward the town and properties on the streets that drop down from the hilltop toward the valley see more rat activity than those on the high ground. The allotments and garden plots on the slopes also provide food and cover for rodents.

Chipping Norton is surrounded by sheep and arable farmland and the fields come close to the town on all sides. Rats and field mice from the farms move into the residential areas when food becomes scarce in the fields, with autumn and early winter being the busiest period. The town's exposed hilltop position means cold winds arrive early in the season, driving mice to seek shelter indoors sooner than in more sheltered towns. Wasp nests are a regular summer problem in the stone buildings of the town centre and in the outbuildings and garden sheds of properties across Chipping Norton.