Pest Control in Shaftesbury

Shaftesbury stands on a hilltop above the Blackmore Vale, famous for Gold Hill with its cobbled slope and thatched cottages. The town is one of the highest in Dorset and that elevated position affects the pest picture in ways you might not expect. The older parts of town around Gold Hill, the High Street and the abbey ruins are built from local greensand stone and the steep slopes and retaining walls create voids and cavities behind them where rats and mice can shelter. The older buildings have thick walls with rubble cores that provide natural pathways for rodents to move through and the cellars cut into the hillside are prone to damp conditions that rats find comfortable. We deal with rat problems in Shaftesbury in these older centre properties more often than you might think for a hilltop town.

The residential areas around Enmore Green at the foot of the hill and along the Salisbury Road have more conventional housing from the post-war and modern periods. These areas sit lower down where the ground is wetter, closer to the springs and streams that rise at the base of the greensand ridge. Mice are common across all the housing types in Shaftesbury and the exposed hilltop position means that when the weather turns cold the drive to get inside a warm building is even stronger than in the sheltered valleys below. Mouse control in Shaftesbury peaks in the autumn months and stays busy right through to spring.

The farmland surrounding Shaftesbury on all sides is classic mixed agricultural country and the fields, barns and hedgerows support large numbers of rodents that move towards the town when conditions change. Wasp nests are common in summer, with the stone-built properties in the older parts of town being a favourite location. The thatched roofs on Gold Hill and around the town are also worth watching, as thatch provides warm, dry nesting conditions for both wasps and rodents if left unchecked.