Woodchester Mansion

S1E3 Episode 3 was recorded in the Gloucestershire countryside at Woodchester Mansion. 

The Grade I listed Victorian mansion near Stroud, which was abandoned during construction in the 1850s, has colonies of rare greater and lesser horseshoe bats, as well as pipistrelles and small numbers of brown long-eared and serotine bats.

The colony of greater horseshoe bats at the gothic manor house has been studied by Dr Roger Ransome and is thought to be the longest continuous study of a mammal by a single individual anywhere in the world.

Woodchester Mansion also offers sell-out evening bat walks in the summer, when the creatures can be seen flying out of the building at dusk to feed. Visit their website which lets you know the best time to visit the bats and details of any bat walks: https://www.woodchestermansion.org.uk/

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Producer: Steve Roe @SteveRoeBatMan
Cover Art: Rachel Hudson ht

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Transcript

Steve Roe: 1:01

This is BatChat, the podcast from the Bat Conservation Trust. So it's a bank holiday weekend, I'm staying in a campsite on the edge of Stroud in Gloucestershire, and I'm walking down through a green wooded valley, and I'm on the way to see Ray Canham from the Woodchester Mansion Trust to find out more about the bats that live in Woodchester mansion. I started off by asking Ray how long had he volunteered for the Woodchester Mansion Trust?

Ray Canham: 1:44

Since 2006. That's what coming up 13 years now? Yeah, I quit work a few couple of years before that. I've known about the Mansion since 1996, when it came up in a creative writing course, dare I say it, because one of the then volunteers was on the course. And he wrote about it one night. And within about three weeks, he bought the entire class and 16 people up there to have a look at it. So 10 years later, I bumped into him down here. And he just said to me, why don't you do something. So you know, the rest is history. As I say, it started off as a tour guide. And then slowly, I've got sucked into the office because [of] IT skills, I blamed creative writing in it for my involvement in this place. I'm now a trustee. And I work in the office a few days a week. And yeah, that's just about brings us up to date. And I just love these creatures. And I'm working reasonably closely. I mean, I'm providing a little bit of the techie support for Roger, and he wants to know things like this. That's nice. I like it.

Steve Roe: 2:42

So Ray, we've come up to the first floor of the mansion. And we've come into a little room called the bat Observatory in front of us, there's a couple of monitors, can you just explain what they

Ray Canham: 2:51

are? What we've got, we've got some fixed and some static cameras in the bat roosts and around the bat roost area. And the mobile ones are the ones we display to the public. And that means that we can actually see the bats, we normally work with a fixed camera position. But we do have the facility to zoom in and zoom in and focus on particular bats. So we can have screen size bats about a foot high. Which is actually quite disconcerting, because when you go down to watch them flying around, and you see them hanging up, you suddenly realise just how small they actually are. But the idea of this is, it's not just for the public, it's also there for Roger Ransome to do his studies. Count, one of the things he does on a regular basis, weekly during the summer, starting this week on the 21st of April. Basically, he'll be down here every week, on a Sunday night between now and probably about mid September, possibly early October, counting the number of bats that are left and even that's a scientific study as well, because he uses the cameras to watch the bats going in and out of the roost. But it's very high tech counting not because basically somebody has sat there focused on that screen with a clicker one left for in, right for out, something like that. And then when the flow has stopped. And part of the science here is Rogers counting them according to the time they leave according to the light level outside and in five minute intervals, that sort of thing. So you know, we do this count once a week. So cameras get used to that as well. We've also got recorders attached to these cameras. So upstairs, there's continuous recording, or as much as we want to record the moment we're not doing much, but they're motion sensitive.

Steve Roe: 4:55

And how long ago were the cameras installed. These particular

Ray Canham: 4:58

ones were installed over. We've been running with them for 12 months now. So a majority of them were installed during the period over the winter of the year before last. I mean, we've had a number of cameras around and the behavioural studies video on that was actually filmed on the previous cameras, believe me that the difference in resolution and difference in quality really shows up. I want to show you just on this one, if I may. If I zoom in, there's a newspaper there on the floor and pitch black when it will focus their autofocus as well. You can actually zoom in and you can read the print on the say it's pitch black. I'm glad they left it there you see because it's a it's a lovely demo when we do our bat walks. It's a lovely demo of the facility of these things. And then we've got high, you know high def screens as well.

Steve Roe: 5:52

And how long was the process of putting the cameras in Was it a couple of days? Or was it longer than that,

Ray Canham: 5:57

we've been pretty lucky of working with a company called Scott Total security who actually put some security cameras around the building. And this project actually started because they put four security cameras around the sides of the building. And then they offered us one camera to go into one of the roosts. And so we took up their kind offer, and they did instal one for free, and then we put in the rest of the stuff. So they were enthusiastic about what they were doing as well. And I think, probably a couple of visits to actually instal the cameras, putting the cameras in as a matter of a day, I think, you know, they do it within the day. And we've had the, shall I say, like electronics expert, down here a few times to tweak various aspects of the system. That I mean, the latest of that was that now we've got the brewery plus the greater plus the lesser exit and the lesser roost on one screen. And we've got all the greater stuff, we've got a fixed camera, we've got the movable one. And we've got the exit on that camera on that screen. So that means actually now that everything that's going through recorders for the lessons is on that screen, and for the greaters is on the other screen, so that helps us separate things out.

Steve Roe: 7:18

And why are you so keen and showing the bats off to the visitors they get here at the mansion?

Ray Canham: 7:23

They've been here for a long time, we're trying to make a feature of it. And it also sort of serves as a degree of education as well, because we run half a dozen bat walks during the course of the year, the fact that we've got the facility for Roger to study the bats, and that's primarily what it's for. I mean, the mansion has gone to review something. But in fairness, Roger's probably contributed at least two thirds of the cost Natural England have also supported us as well in this point. But the fact that we've got these, rather than just having them sat there doing nothing when visitors are here, it makes a lot of sense. Just put them on there because some visitors are so terrified by bats, but the majority of them are not, they're actually fascinated. And if if I happen to be in here, and I'm you know, when visitors here, I will talk about them and you can see, you know, sort of degree of fascination. So we're trying to use it as an additional vehicle to promote the mansion really is one of the attributes we've got. If you look at the clocktower, there are two bat gargoyles on there, which probably indicates to me there were bats around this place 160 years ago when it was built. So you know, we're promoting it?

Steve Roe: 8:34

And what sort of comments do you get from visitors when they're sat here watching the cameras,

Ray Canham: 8:38

Mainly, that they are fascinated to learn a bit about them, because I think most people are totally ignorant of bats. And when you can talk about them. And I mean, I will drop into the conversation, the fact that babies are born at 30% of the body weight of the adult, which you know, is a bit eye watering when you convert that into a, you know, a three stone baby, but just telling them a little bit about the life cycle and what they do and when they come. And of course, we have the other part of the explanation, which I'm trying to address with a couple of little pieces of information there. About they come in here and early as early in April, for instance, as they did this year, or mid September, these cameras are on, they can watch the video. But there's no you know, there are no backs visible. So the next question is, where are they to talk about where they go and a bit about the lifecycle of bats. And I think most people really do find it interesting. And when we have the bat walks, to see them flying around your head in the back corridor that is really, you know, it's really thrilling. And about what's really popular here. And I think out of the five we ran successfully last year. We can only do 15 At a time in here because it just gets too cosy. So 15 Five of them that 75 And I'd say we probably had 70 of those places filled last year. Certainly a couple of them were oversubscribed. And I'm hoping that hoping that we can do the same this year. I work with a colleague from the Gloucester bat group. So you know, we'll have about an hour's conversation about the bats looking at them into it's like, and last year in one particular talk. There's an element on the video of the bat behaviour where bat is shaking off baby before they go out. I love this idea that you can hang the baby up and go into your shopping and but they were shaking off and we actually saw that in practice when they're late in late in July, I think last year and it was really amazing to see it on there just as it really does on the knee. You see the pictures of it and then you think well okay, that's really happening. It's happening for real. So yeah, people do are interested and if If we can do anything about it, we can spread a little bit of war. What do you do if you find bats and things like that I don't handle them in such like, but also dispel the myth that they will get in your hair. The other thing we've got here, because Ryan, Jeff used to teach in Red Rock School in Desley. So when a pitcher Roger comes up on the screen, oh, he used to teach me biology. Because you've got that generational thing. I mean, he's been doing this.

Steve Roe: 11:55

As we approached the mansion this morning, the scaffolding up, what sort of challenges are there to looking after a grade one listed building like this,

Ray Canham: 12:01

the building itself, our immediate challenges, we could do with about 5 million pounds. That's what the estimated cost of restoring the building is, we don't plan to finish it. Which means that we'll keep it in the state its in now. So you can see the way a Victorian Gothic building was constructed. And right at the very moment, of course, it's slightly topical, because Benjamin Button or who is the architect of the Victorian bit of this was a disciple of the elder Duke, whose name you might have heard crop up not too long, you know, in the last few days, because of the burning down of the roof of Notre-Dame in Paris. And in fact, it turns out that he was the one who designed the little spire on the top and the one you probably saw the video of falling into the heap. And I've heard one or two comments on the radio, some praising him for what he did, and others saying, well, he made every church in France look the same. So he's got bad press, and he's got good press on that school. But the problems we've got, I suppose we found one immediate problem when we were on the brewery area, some of the roof there is in little bit of trouble at the moment, and we're going to have to do some remedial work on it. And I thought that we ought to be doing that work during the winter, because the bats aren't here. But in fact, Roger was saying you need to be careful during the winter, because you find some of the bats not necessarily the greater and lesser horseshoes, no, because they don't crawl into little spaces, but purpose drills and things like that will. Therefore it turns out the probably the best time to do this work is during the summer, providing we're not working there in the hours because we are going to have to have some scaffolding or something probably inside as well as outside and do some shoring up there. But by and large, that's not a it's not a problem at all. Roger is actually very good about what we can do and what we can't do. And we consult him closely, obviously, fears back when we were having Halloween parties and things like that, on the south side of the building in the main rooms, you know, the issues came up, what do what effect will this have on the bats. And then again, when we've had filming down here, there are maybe not too worried about the area, providing they stay away from the entrance to the hub inoculum. So, you know, I mean, there's a respect for them. But in terms of in terms of actually being a problem at all, that's not an issue. So, yeah,

Steve Roe: 14:40

thank you so much. And in late June, I was back at Woodchester Mansion talking to Dr. Roger Ransome about his lifelong study of the greater horseshoe bats at Woodchester in a very echoey room, whilst his volunteers were undertaking a count of the roost using the cameras next door. Roger, can you just give us a bit of background as to what the mansion is and what bat species we've got here and what sort of bats you're interested in here?

Roger Ransome: 15:07

Well, the Mansion's a perfect, derelict abandoned, building, set in wonderful habitat in lovely Valley, which was originally a monastery garden. It has five species of bats in it. Currently, number one in terms of population size, is the lesser horseshoe bat. Second comes the greater horseshoe bat. Thirdly, we have what we believe are common pipistrelles as quite a good colony, taking advantage of the heaters in the greater horseshoe attic. And then we have a small group of long-eared's, which we haven't really studied at all. And lastly, for the last few years, or probably for perhaps 10 or more years, we've had a single serotine occupying different parts.

Steve Roe: 16:13

And you've been studying the bats here for over sixty years now. How did you end up studying it for so long and when did you start?

Roger Ransome: 16:22

I started as a sixth form student and 1956, which was when I was 16. And I got into the sixth form at 15. And in the second year, we had a talk by a French teacher who used to ring birds. And he'd had gone to France and started helping out with some French people ringing greater horseshoe bats Would you believe. And he gave us a talk. And that talk sparked a group of four of us to actually start a ringing study in the mines of Minchinhampton. And they mentioned building itself. That while I was the only one who was fortunate enough for us, but I was the only one who was fortunate enough to get into Bristol University, which meant that I didn't have to stop my project. Whilst I was doing my undergraduate studies. I did a three year degree and then followed it with a PGCE one year course. And during all that time, I was accumulating basic data and making sure that I knew the best way of collecting information. And I had a lot of help from people in Somerset. And I was studying lots of different places to see if they were doing that's we're doing the same thing in all these different regions. And it was, it was clear to me that what was happening in the different places, was following the same sort of general pattern. And I was having finished my university degree, university studies, I look for a job as a teacher. And amazingly, I was so lucky to get first of all, a position that was available six miles from the mansion. And secondly, whether I was the only candidate, I don't know, but I was offered the job. And I stayed at that school for 33 years now. And I only left as a result of the national curriculum, this wrecking the courses that I had set up at the school. And that sort of pushed me into environmental studies. Advice. And a lot of the research done in this building was actually used, and we trialled lots of the mitigation techniques in this building. And from that, I was pretty confident when we came to 2007 years after I left teaching, I managed to get a huge contract to stabilise 45 acres of underground workings which had 12 species of bats using it. And that gave me an income which could fund generously all of the research which is carried on. So I am independent. And I make my own decisions as to which direction I go. But having said that, I've benefited from collaborative help from particularly Gareth Jones. But whole series of PhD students who mutually we benefit because they introduce new new topics, new aspects of the work. And I'm able to offer them the basic information and the data, which they couldn't otherwise obtain.

Steve Roe: 20:44

And you've been bringing the bats all those years. From that. Have you been able to see how the population of the horseshoes has changed over time?

Roger Ransome: 20:52

Yes, I could have done that without reading. Because now we've done all the trials we know that the best way to judge a population of greater horseshoe bats is if you know the maternity roost. Just go in and count the babies born. after dusk exit over a period of two to three weeks, you'll get a good basis for working it out. By individually ringing the bats. We've got unique data which spans several, because they live 30 years I've spanned two complete cycles of births and deaths. And we follow the numbers which have gone. Well, originally where there were 110 babies born in this building in the late 1950s. And then following the severe winters of the early 60s they slumped to, I think we were down at that stage to 65. And for a long time, they sort of struggled at 65 until we got to the 1980s. And then we had a second very bad series of consecutive bad winters and cold springs they do the damage.

Steve Roe: 22:22

And is that due to damage because that's can't survive on the fat reserves or is it because horseshoes need to go out and forage in the winter.

Roger Ransome: 22:30

It's partly the winter foraging but not mainly that most mortality of these bats is going to occur really, generally in April, May and early June. And the and the killer is early June. Because up until the end of May, they can still use prolonged torpor, which is what hibernation is to actually sit out several days of bad weather. Once you get into June, they can't stay in torpor for more than 24 hours, they wake up every day, if day after day, they're not getting anything to eat. Within a few days, they're dying. But the other factor is when you get a series of bad summers and winters, you get a lot of stunted babies being surviving for short periods. And that really prepares the way for a really bad spring, which happened in 1986. And our numbers went from 65 births to 33 to 20. Over two summers. We nearly lost the whole and this happened in west Wales. It happened in the Forest of Dean in anywhere where there were proper studies going show that this wasn't just happening in Woodchester mansion, it was happening generally.

Steve Roe: 24:04

And in 2011, you wrote an article for that Conservation Trust Bat News. Explaining the alpacas can be good for horseshoe bats undertaking winter foraging. How's that so? How often do horseshoe bats forage in the

Roger Ransome: 24:17

Well, that's a very difficult question to winter? answer. But basically, the the two groups of greater horseshoe bats that generally have the greatest problems to survive a winter will be the adult males that have had a mating territories, and they've mated with the females in the early part of the winter. And rather like the deer, they deprive themselves of food, and they don't store up the fat that they should do to survive the winter. So the adult male is is is great risk, and the others that are great risks are the juveniles born very late in the summer, because they have they've got to wait until they've completed their growth. And that conflicts with desposited fats, you can't do both. So what happens is in the in the winter, you if it's severe weather and you cannot feed, save from January to beginning of March, then you've got a good chance of not surviving that period. But that's fairly unusually I can't think of many years where that happened. The worst one was 1962/63 were snow that came on Boxing Day and didn't thought till mid February.

Steve Roe: 25:47

And were do the Alpacas come in?

Roger Ransome: 25:50

Well, I've got a great deal of time for Alpacas. I'm not in favour of introducing foreign species into an ecosystem but in practical terms, if you're trying to get grazing systems in place close to roost, summer or winter shape are very good, especially in winter. But the trouble with sheep is they suffer a lot from dog owners who are not careful in looking after their animals. And it's a big it's very difficult to persuade anybody to graze sheep close close to bat roosts. Now, cattle, very rarely are left out by farmers because they, they need to get their growth through in order to be able to sell them. And now an alpaca, it has a lot of things going for it. One is, it is a very economic animal to keep, you can keep more of them on the same piece of land, they've got soft feet, and they don't churn up the turf, which is called poaching, like carriers would do or horses. So if you've got alpacas, you've got an animal, which is big enough to kick your fox in the face, and deteriorate from you know, attack. And we were very lucky for several years where we had a really nice flock of alpacas going. And then sadly, the owners went through a divorce and fell apart. And I'm afraid it's been very difficult to, um, all the alpacas had to go I'm afraid.

Steve Roe: 27:53

And I mean the volunteers next door in the camera room and counting out the bats this evening. So populations at the moment seem to be fairly stable. Your last count last week was how many?

Roger Ransome: 28:03

Well, last week was 116. But we have we've had down to 18 and 70. Not so long ago. And we were I think the big problem is it's easy to get a great get a regime that will generate certain insects at certain times of year. But if the weather doesn't, doesn't play ball with you, then it doesn't always work. And the last two springs, we've had two very dry spells in the spring. And it's had a bad effect on the Tipulidae the daddy long legs. And I think what happens is you get in the early spring, you get caught chafers coming along. They're the best diet they can have give given all the insects they eat at one time, which doesn't happen. But if you could, they already caught chafers their idiot fliers they fly low over the ground, they land on this floor, they grab them. But after the cockchavers if you haven't got Tipulids to take their place, the bats just have to go back and spread out all around the hibernation sites again, and then you're waiting for the moths to come. And moths, as you know in southern England haven't done too well. So

Steve Roe: 29:29

So populations seem to be fluctuating even now. What does the future hold for the roost here? Where do we go to continue conserving the distribution? Horseshoe bats in general?

Roger Ransome: 29:42

Well, this colony here is extremely fortunate in its own right, because the building here is owned by the Stroud District Council which used to have the only green Council in the country. Because the whole valley is an SSSI then we've there is safeguards for the whole of this valley, which is two miles long, lovely lakes. We've re instituted the kind of habitat that was here in the 50s which sadly went for commercial reasons at that time. So and we are adjacent to some pretty significant National Trust pieces of land, which at least means no use of housing developments. The biggest problem we have here is the gradual creeping in urbanisation. And this is a big growth area for housing and then in the valley. There are some substantial developments that have already got consent. Now, what we realised when Foot and Mouth Disease hit the Forest of Dean when they slaughtered all the livestock in the forest. Our bats suffered as well as theirs even though there are no losers. There's no slaughtering in this valley we had our inaugural caves. These dung beetles come in from huge distances because an a fold is dung beetle can sniff out a cow pancake at 12 kilometres, they are awesome some of these insects and we don't really understand this. So it's drawn in from a wide, huge area.

Steve Roe: 31:39

And the housing developments is that because of a mixture of things, is it both taken up the land and the connectivity? Or is it the light and strategies? Or is it a mixture of things that the housing developments are bad for the local values?

Roger Ransome: 31:54

There are lots of things it could be but I think what seems to always happen is as you were urbanised and the land around the area can't be found in the way that it was before. And what we really need are enough farms who are willing to leave cattle or sheep or all the time because only the insect life cycles are primarily annual. And if you rob all the winter insects of their food by taking away with Gia Trooper speaker which is as big as a cocktail for a horse in the forest, that Dean there to a penny. And when we did diet studies over there, you can see 90% deer troupis We catch back so over here and we get the droppings from and they're full of ophion wasps. They're parasitic on moths. If the moths go down the parasitic wasps go down, there's no dor beetles so this is why our numbers locally in in the Minchinhampton mines, have gone down. Years ago there were 110 when the cattle were out on feeding on Minchinhampton common all year round Nowa days. They're not there after November.

Steve Roe: 33:21

And you mentioned mine's a couple of times. There are basements here in the mansion to the bats hibernate here or do they go elsewhere into the forest to Dean area?

Roger Ransome: 33:29

Well, in the winter bats have to disperse so that they there are fewer of them in a small area and they can only go short distances. Now, this is a cold Valley. And if we we used to have up to 20 hibernating here, but no more when they were 350 total population. So it's not possible no matter how good the hibernation conditions are here for them to stay here. Yeah, they will go by choice if the if the conditions close by Minchinhampton were perfect. They will go with them for big clusters. But what they don't they don't do that what they do is they travel across the motorway or under the motorway. They go head for the river seven they go down Harling, and they cross the news wherever the severn board can be seen. And they go and join the Ciniford bats in the forest of dean because they got loads of food.

Steve Roe: 34:34

So they're travelling long distances. Even in

Roger Ransome: 34:37

the first year, you'll get juveniles struggle there. But to find those signs, they've got to be born early. Yes. So you're back to birth timing.

Steve Roe: 34:48

And being involved with bat work for more than 60 years mean, you've seen advances in technology? What bits of tech have really helped with the study? And are there still any bits of original kit that you would prefer over modern technology?

Roger Ransome: 35:02

Rather than the most important factor for technologically for me was David Bale, who lives in Cheltenham. He and I collaborated together on the sort of detectors we needed to do the monitoring both for the works and also subsequently. They're the machines that Maggie Andrews uses for her social work time expansion, high quality machines, which the French bought in large numbers you know but the British didn't use them and I'm afraid he's got disillusioned that it really is a tragedy because I'm using his machines that I bought in 2005. And here we are 15 years later, and they're still working. And I've got them out there through the summer getting data for Gareth for some of his students, or for Maggie. And one of the big breakthroughs coming next is going to be social interactions and I think is a very fruitful area.

Steve Roe: 36:19

And your work here is thought to be the world's longest continuous study of a mammal by a single person. What's kept your dedication to the Study what is it that keeps you coming back time after time to carry on the study?

Roger Ransome: 36:35

My inquisitive nature and my refusal to be condemned by educationists in the past. I think many teachers have no idea what makes a scientist and you can get a first class honours degree based primarily on Remembrance and regurgitation. And that does not make you a research scientist. Look at the average degree of a Fellow of the Royal Society isn't a first by any means. And what's

Steve Roe: 37:13

the hardest thing to keep motivated about the study?

Roger Ransome: 37:18

Time. I'm doing so many different things at the moment. It's absolutely not only stressful on me, and I'm amazingly fortunate in my inheritance with my build and my longevity. If you don't live with all of you can study these bats. And my wife.

Steve Roe: 37:50

And the volunteers that you have coming to do the counts how vital is the help from those volunteers to help you do the study. Oh, I

Roger Ransome: 37:57

couldn't do it. And we've always had really good we've got 14 different people. Yeah, so generally, we've got no problem getting people to come in fact often have to disappoint people. And Colin Morris is very sadly Vincent Wildlife Trust dispensed with his services but he's a very great help to me as well. And it comes up from Dorset out if I were short of handlers. But none of this could be done on your own. Just not possible.

Steve Roe: 38:46

Or Johnson Thank you very much. And if you want to visit Woodchester mansion the link to their website, which includes details of when the bats have returned is in the show notes to this episode. We'll be back in two weeks time when we visit rye harbour Nature Reserve in Sussex in the search for Nathusius' pipistrelle bats. Until then, don't forget to subscribe and that way the next episode will automatically find its way onto your phone.