On a Wing and a Prayer

This week we visit Tattershall Church. As we’ll hear in this episode, Holy Trinity is a very important place for bats, with two maternity roosts present along with a number of other species. The site has been part of the National Bat Monitoring Programme for many years.

The church is a great example of co-existence with a large number of bats and the church community have built great relationships with Lincolnshire Bat Group and they use bats as a unique selling point to engage visitors. The congregation hold bat-themed events throughout the season and have even created merchandise featuring their ‘Tatty Bat’ mascot. However, cleaning has been a constant challenge.

In this episode we hear how the Bats in Churches (BiC) project supported the church to help alleviate the challenges that bats were causing and we also speak to artist Ilene Sterns whose artwork On a Wing and a Prayer was exhibited inside Holy Trinity as part of the BiC project.

Chapters

• 0:12 Welcome to Bat Chat
• 1:50 Meeting the Church Treasurer
• 6:15 Bat Artwork Installation
• 11:48 Eileen Stearns Interview
• 13:47 Return to Holy Trinity
• 17:57 Insights from Ian Nixon
• 24:07 The Importance of Roosts
• 30:02 Upcoming Episodes and Wrap Up

Transcript

Steve Roe:
[0:05] Hello and welcome to another episode of this series of the Bat Conservation

Steve Roe:
[0:10] Trust's award-winning podcast, BatChat. I'm Steve Roe, your host, and this is series seven with a new episode being released every other Wednesday until the spring of 2026.

Steve Roe:
[0:22] I hope you're all enjoying the festive break. Last time we were chatting with Edward Wells from the Somerset Bat Group. This week we're in Lincolnshire at the Collegiate Church of Holy Trinity at Tattershall. Located next door to the National Trust's Tattershall Castle, this Church of England 15th century structure is in the perpendicular style and so is flooded with light from enormous windows. As we'll hear in this episode Holy Trinity is a really important place for bats with two maternity roosts present along with a number of other species. The site has been part of the National Bat Monitoring Programme, or NBMP, for many years. The church is a great example of coexistence with a large number of bats and the church community have built great relationships with Lincolnshire Bat Group and they use bats as a unique selling point to engage visitors. The congregation hold bat themed events throughout the season and have even created merchandise featuring their tatty bat mascot. However, cleaning has been a constant challenge. Supported by the Bats in Churches project and with input from the church community, a specially licensed ecologist and church architect, the church altered the way that the bats used the church. The aim was to prevent the bats from roosting in certain areas and flying through the building, reducing their impact on the fabric and community use. Existing access points were blocked and replaced by an access point that confined their impact to a less used and more manageable part of the church.

Steve Roe:
[1:45] Later on, we'll hear from Lincolnshire Bat Group's Ian Nixon,

Steve Roe:
[1:48] who has been leading the NBMP surveys here for a number of years. But we start this episode by meeting the church treasurer, David Mullinger, and has been working with Ian at this site to help manage the bat situation. And then we'll meet an artist who created a piece of bat artwork, which went on display here.

David Mullinger:
[2:03] Yeah, I'm David Mullinger, and I'm involved with the church on the fabric side, and I'm also treasurer. And involved with the Batts with Ian for about the last 15 years.

Steve Roe:
[2:16] It's a very impressive structure. Just tell us a bit about the history of the church. A quick Google search tells me it's from the 15th century, but tell us why Holy Trinity is so significant.

David Mullinger:
[2:25] It's about the fifth largest parish church in the country, so we're told. It was built as a college, and it's strange that the chancel was used by the seven priests and the choir. And it carried on going. It was only actually in operation from about 1500 until Henry VIII decided he was going to get rid of it. They lost six priests. All the buildings were taken down. From there, it became like a lot of the churches during that period. It was put to use as a normal church, but only with one priest. There was no master and from there it went downhill until mid-1900s. They closed the nave off, it was just used for access and when we came in 1980 the cobwebs were nearly floor to ceiling in the nave and it had £500,000 spent on it between 1988 and 2000 to get it to a liveable state and since then it's had a fair amount spent on drainage and bits and pieces and keep it going as churches do

Steve Roe:
[3:49] Looking at your website, you have all the usual weddings, funerals, baptisms, but additionally you also have flower festivals, harvest suppers, concerts, exhibitions. I've seen from walking around when we were having a chat a little bit ago, you've got toilets, you've got kitchen, making facility for teas and coffees. Clearly the church is well used. The striking thing for me when I walked in is there's no pews. Why is that?

David Mullinger:
[4:11] It goes back to a long time ago we had the chairs with the wicker basses and they had more woodworm than they had wood. So they got rid of those and there was a church closing in Grimsby and they got pews from there. But because the school, one of the reasons we got rid of them was because the school use it, they have to keep moving them and they were getting too heavy. They were also breaking. So we've now got 300 chairs we can put out and they can be put as people wish to use them.

Steve Roe:
[4:50] We've been talking to Ian, who we'll chat to in a minute, and there's a lot of drop-ins around the church. Clearly there's a lot of bats in the Holy Trinity. What sort of issues are they causing?

David Mullinger:
[5:00] The main issues are the droppings of the urine. We have nothing against the bats as bats, but it's a full-time job trying to keep it clean and usable for the general public.

Steve Roe:
[5:13] You've clearly got a good relationship with the bat group, and they're running events for you. How does that work in your favour, given that you're next door to Tattershaw Castle? You must have a lot of visitors.

David Mullinger:
[5:24] The Bat Group, or Ian very kindly, does a bat night for us every year. The Bat Group come in twice a year to do the high-level cleaning for us, which is a big bonus. And they are also involved with the castle, but nothing like to that degree.

Steve Roe:
[5:46] You had Ilene Stern's artwork installation here on a wing in a prairie in March last year. How was that received by visitors?

David Mullinger:
[5:54] Because the church was unmanned when we had the exhibition, we got some very pleasant comments about it. It was impressive, especially with the light coming through from behind it with the shint-thin material.

David Mullinger:
[6:12] It did look very good, and the sound effects were good.

Steve Roe:
[6:15] So David mentioned there the art installation On a Wing and a Prayer, which was commissioned by the Bats in Churches project. One of the pieces of feedback we received when we ran our listener survey a few years ago was that you wanted to hear more on bats and art and so i interviewed the creator of this art installation Ilene Sterns. I interviewed Ilene a couple of years ago and in this interview she mentions her partner Phil Atkin who we heard from in episode 58 season 6 who invented the pipe astral bat detector which is a cost-effective detector and Phil recorded the audio track we'll hear as part of the artwork. I started off by asking Ilene what her background as an artist is.

Ilene Sterns:
[6:53] I've been an artist for more than 40 years. I started actually with a postgraduate degree in archaeology and I was studying other people's art. And all the way along I was doing scientific illustration and lots of other things and I finally decided the time was now and I moved to New York and I started working in the New York art world in the early 1980s. And in those days it was mainly large-scale painting constructions and I quickly moved into large-scale installations and I've been doing that pretty much ever since.

Steve Roe:
[7:25] Was it the Bats in Churches that approached you or was it you thought, oh, there's a gap here and actually we could do something here?

Ilene Sterns:
[7:31] As a volunteer, they learned that I was an artist and they asked if I would be interested in doing a project with them. And it was a really interesting brief to me because they wanted to involve one of the communities that was one of the Batson Churches churches. And we first started doing it with Compton Martin, which is St. Michael's. They had a very active bat champion in their community. And we spoke to her about going into the schools and also asking other people in the community for their opinion on their church bats. So that's how the project got started. And I then received all this information from them, which was absolutely remarkable. It was the most poetic, beautiful descriptions of bats I'd ever seen. And I kind of went from there. We talked about what would work in the church. I do mainly large-scale multimedia installations, so I knew there would be sound. And that was where Phil came in. I had the people in the church and Phil record me some sound, and then Phil expanded that to other Batson churches using his detector. And it's an hour-long audio escape that is part of the large-scale multimedia piece.

Steve Roe:
[8:53] So you've got the sound of the bats in time expansion, I think, isn't it? And then in terms of the visual side of it then, how did you decide what the concept would be? And what does it actually look like now that it's in place?

Ilene Sterns:
[9:05] I'm inspired by photography and by photographic images, but also by words and literature. So I went out with my camera. I use a selective focus lens, which creates a kind of blurry images, and they're quite beautiful and ethereal, but they're not sharp and modern, high-definition images. And I took photographs of churches. I started at Compton Martin and St. Michael's, and then I went and did a lot of other churches just to sort of have some variety. And then I used those as the base for the very large-scale image which was then printed onto sheer cotton and silk fabric six feet high and four feet wide and I overlaid it with images of bats which I got from Bats in Churches and also with the words the text that they had given me from that community and so they're very large-scale photo collages as it were they're transparent and they're hung from metal frames, and they blow in the breeze as people walk by. There are four of them, and I like them scattered around the church, so that they're quite immersive. You come up to one, and it may be a dark evening, and you'll see it one way, or if it's brightly lit, you'll see it another way.

Steve Roe:
[10:21] We'll put a link in the show notes to some of these images, but I noticed that in some churches, they've tried to match your images with bits of the church. So where you've got a bit of an arched window, they've tried to match it with their arched window, haven't they?

Ilene Sterns:
[10:32] And Phil and I love that because I actually did a lot of work in virtual reality, as did he. And so that's a kind of an augmented reality in some ways. And it makes for a very, very interesting visual image. Often the churches are so well known by the people who live with them that as soon as they would see one of the pieces, they'd know right away where they wanted to quit it.

Steve Roe:
[10:58] How many churches has it toured? Have you got any idea of how many people have actually seen the exhibition?

Ilene Sterns:
[11:04] It was in, I believe, 10 churches. It was in a lot of different counties. It started in Somerset, then I took it up to Wiltshire, it was in Norfolk, it went down to Cornwall, it's been in Lincolnshire. And each time it went to a church, it was basically left in the hands of either the wardens or the other people who were there to arrange it the way they like. And at the end of the tour, which was a year, I think over 5,000 people had seen it and it finished up at the Batson Church's final event in London before going up to Yorkshire, where it is now.

Steve Roe:
[11:44] So what does it feel like knowing so many people have seen your weather, you've created?

Ilene Sterns:
[11:49] It's actually amazing to me that the positive reactions to the work is just like the positive reactions to bats. Because so many people say, oh, bats have a bad reputation. I've discovered quite the opposite, that most of the people who have bats in their churches are absolutely delighted with them. They love living with them. You know, they don't like cleaning them up all the time. But other than that, there's no sense of them interfering with the life of the church. I had a lot of feedback from people who said, we saw the piece and we realized that it was about the bats and we have bats in our church and we love them. And so it's been a very positive experience.

Steve Roe:
[12:31] Yeah. What made you choose the medium for your sort of transparent costume piece, I guess, rather than doing something like a canvas or something else?

Ilene Sterns:
[12:39] I've been working that way since the 1980s. I love transparency. I like the fact that not only do you see through it to something else, but that your point of view determines what you see. So it's very changeable. And a canvas is wonderful, but it's on a wall and it's opaque and it's fixed. And these are movable. So every church that they were in had a completely different type of architecture. Some had pews, some didn't. So where it is now at St. Peter's in Winteringham, there's no pews. And it's a white interior. So it's very, very different to where it started, say, Compton Martin, which was a much darker, more richly colored church with lots of stained glass and box pews and so on.

Steve Roe:
[13:23] In terms of the stuff Phil's done for producing the audio soundscape then... You say it's an owl on the piece. Do you know what sort of species you've got in there? Is it a mix of all different species?

Ilene Sterns:
[13:33] We have a mix of all different bats, and we've also got lots of different calls. We have social calls, we've got some feeding buzzers, we've got all kinds of things.

Ilene Sterns:
[13:41] And they play at different levels of volume, so some of them are much louder than others. And I don't think anybody really sits and listens to a whole hour of it, but I have had people tell me, because you can download it, I've had people tell me that they play it at home while they're working because it sounds like birdsong and it's very relaxing

Steve Roe:
[14:03] Brilliant we'll put a link to your website on the show notes on eileen thank you very much for being on the show thank you

Ilene Sterns:
[14:07] I enjoyed chatting with you thanks very much

Steve Roe:
[14:09] Thanks to eileen for that interview and so now we'll head back to holy trinity to pick up the rest of the story. Sheila can you introduce yourself and what your role here is at holy trinity? Yes I'm church warden at holy trinity I've been church warden for about 35 years here and over those 35 years what's probably your most memorable experience of the bats here i think having um Prince Charles come in 2018 he came um to lincolnshire that day and one of the main reasons he wanted to come to this church was to see how we look after the bats and i think he was quite impressed that we've got some screening up and some covers and we cover everything down and sweep everything up and really you know try to live with the bats and he said i'll go away and when other people are complaining i'll tell them what to do you know he was he was really impressed and um we had a lot of people here that day a lot of the people that helped with the tea bar and everything and a lot of them don't like the bats so they told him their view of it so i think i think yes he had both points of view yeah but uh he was really pleased the way they're being looked after here and what are your view of the bats I don't mind them. I'm quite happy to have them. They were here long, long before me and they'll be here long after I've gone.

Sheila:
[15:28] And I just get a bit cross sometimes when you've got to come in and clean everything up before you can start. But it doesn't last long. And we've heard from David just then, you know, I was saying to David, you do all the usual services. And additionally, you do things like harvest us purrs and your exhibitions and things.

Steve Roe:
[15:47] Apart from the numbers of bats, what are the sort of issues that they're causing them? They do make an awful lot of mess, which is wet and dry. Yeah, and having to keep doors shut in the evening, have to shut the door to the chancel, because they're not in there at the moment, and we don't want to get any more in there. So it's things like that. And in terms of the cleaning up operation then, you know, how often is the cleaning done, and what sort of cleaning are you guys doing to try and keep on top of it? Well, we have to sweep up every time we run the T-bar here. So this morning, David was in, he had to hoover all the floor down there, because that's where they are at the moment and there's very big deposits down there and we have to keep everything covered and then we have to take it off and wash all the tables down.

Sheila:
[16:31] In the week when we're not running the tea bar, we just sweep up a bit because we can't be over here all the time. But whenever we've got anything on, Sunday service or anything, we've got to be in and get it cleaned. And how long does that sort of operation take? I'm trying to, people listening to this won't be able to see the size of the church. Just give them a sense of how big it is and how long that sort of thing takes. Well, it's a huge church. It's a mini cathedral.

Sheila:
[16:55] And it can take up to an hour with two of you sweeping up and mopping down. Yeah and we always leave brushes over by the door and if any visitors complain a lot i say look there's some brushes there if you wouldn't mind we'd be very grateful if you just sweep it into a little pile for us sounds like the way forward to me the guys are over there talking by the brasses which are covered at the moment and you've got two new piles of drop-ins do the bats move around a lot then yes they move around the church at the moment they're just down there and then they've gradually moved down they'll probably be down by the pulpit in another week or so and i guess that's why it's so difficult to know where they're going to be to clean up yes yes when we come in literally we say to each other oh they've moved last night they're here now so you just don't know where they're going to be the bat group work with you guys to put on events do bat walks and events for things how are the bats received by the general public then yes yeah they thoroughly enjoy the evenings ian puts on and everything especially the children they love to see them Brilliant. Sheila, thank you very much. That's quite all right.

Steve Roe:
[17:57] And now we'll finish with Ian Nixon from the Lincolnshire Bat Group before we get set up for the evening's NBMP count.

Steve Roe:
[18:05] And let's just talk about the significance of the roosteroops. Historically, we've had major problems with the bats. We've just heard from Dave and Sheila there. It was also one of the first churches to turn the tide in attitudes of bats. When and how did the initial issues with the bats start?

Ian Nixon:
[18:21] Well, the bats have been here a long time. I think we had a visitor the other week that said that his father had seen them here. And we worked out that it was over 100 years ago. So they've been here a long time. The numbers of the bats here have increased against national trends in a lot of cases and so as is usual with bats the problem has been the droppings because the church has an income from the tea bar heritage center so trying to serve food and drinks in in the church when it's it's messy it's a problem because they have to clean up every day yeah

Steve Roe:
[18:57] And it gets a lot of visitors doesn't it because it's next door to the

Ian Nixon:
[19:00] Castle yes yeah so there's the national trust castle national castle next door and all the footfall is past the church from the car park which is quite handy because they can all come in here and have a cup of tea and that means that you know like i say the church gets an income from that so

Steve Roe:
[19:19] What size and type of roost have we got here and how many species have you got?

Ian Nixon:
[19:24] Where do I start? So we have maternity colonies of soprano pipistrol and dolbentons. The soprano pipistrols are around 600 and the dolbentons around 120-ish before they have to yell. On top of that, there are records here of brown long-eared bats, whiskered bats, we've had natures turn up in here, we have common pipistrelle, we've had anesthesia's pipistrelle in here, and then two years ago we had a bat turn up on the door as somebody was coming in, which was a serotine, the first serotine in Lincolnshire in the hand. So yes, it has a few bats here.

Steve Roe:
[20:11] Sheila was saying that the bats move around a lot which is part of the issues and she was explaining you guys have put temporary canopies up and over the brass is over there there are again many shelters and there are dust sheets everywhere how long has it taken to get the relationship going with the church to turn that attitude around it

Ian Nixon:
[20:29] Took quite a while I've been involved with the church here since 2007 so yes a lot of the as you can see the tables are covered with cloths, all of the stuff that they sell is all covered. And then we've put up these other temporary covers. So that work took probably four or five years to get sort of going and building up a relationship and a trust between us.

Steve Roe:
[20:59] Is the access point for all the bats over the door, are there multiple access points around the building?

Ian Nixon:
[21:04] So there are three doors, the north, west and south doors. All three were access points. But under the bats in church's work we've done, we've now closed off the south door. But we've provided two more access points in the windows, one in the north transept and one in the south.

Steve Roe:
[21:25] So when you say you provided window access...

Ian Nixon:
[21:28] These windows in here don't open, so it's necessitated taking out a piece of glass.

Steve Roe:
[21:34] Which one would you say is the best, or is it a combination of everything?

Ian Nixon:
[21:37] It's probably a combination of it. The other part that we haven't mentioned is that above the South Isle, which is where the Heritage Centre and the kitchen is, we also had a high-level scaffold in here and blocked up all of the access points for the bats within the timber work, of which there were many. And Barry Collins and myself and his team, we spent one night in here putting in excluders until about three o'clock in the morning, as you do.

Steve Roe:
[22:08] One of the things that visitors see when they first come in are two very large info boards. Just tell us a bit more about those, because I know that the big one was here when I came a long time ago.

Ian Nixon:
[22:17] Yes, that one was done by Shirley Thompson, long before my time. So that's been there. And we update it with the counts every year so that visitors can see just what numbers there are. And then, yes, there's all the other information boards. And we have the vicar who's just left. she was also involved with the church school in the village and she devised along with julia she came up with tatty bat which the children all drew pictures of tatty bat and then we had one of them was selected as tatty bat itself and then we had a another group they made a tapestry bat and then the thing was it was moved around the church and the children had to come and find it that was quite good back

Steve Roe:
[23:09] In 2017 2018 you had a large meeting here at the very start of the bat conservation trust bats in churches project that's just come to a close what was it like

Ian Nixon:
[23:18] I think having it within the church made people understand some of the issues and made it a lot easier to understand than sat in an office somewhere yeah is

Steve Roe:
[23:31] This the largest issue you've in the county or you know is that the one that's just the most problematic

Ian Nixon:
[23:35] We don't have problems We have challenges. There's a couple of other big pepper straw roosts. It's the biggest Dolbentans roost, certainly within a building. I don't know, I'd say within these mittens. I don't know, probably. But it is the one that is known about and that much more than anything else. Everybody seems to know about Tattershaw.

Steve Roe:
[24:01] What other bat species have you got in the county other than the ones you've

Steve Roe:
[24:04] got are here? And just tell us a bit more about Lincolnshire Bat Group. What are you guys up to at the moment?

Ian Nixon:
[24:09] So within the county, we have, I think other than the ones we've mentioned, Brantz, we have some in the north-east, north-west of the county, and Barberstals, we have the furthest north maternity roost of Barberstals.

Steve Roe:
[24:26] Show off!

Ian Nixon:
[24:28] You've got to, haven't you? And the back group, we have back box checks. We have one not too far from here. We're going to try and get a couple more going this year little schemes we do shows and events and then back care as well it's pretty active then yeah we're about 70 members I think at the moment

Steve Roe:
[24:51] So you're about to start the process of setting up for tonight's MBMP roost count how long have you been counting for National McBarnishing programme and is the roost stable or is it you said it's increased, how much has it increased over the years

Ian Nixon:
[25:02] So So I think it started about 97. I can't be exactly sure. And yes, it has increased. I think around the first counts, there was maybe something like 200, 300 bats. But it does seem to increase. And last year, I think we managed 998. So we were just short of the 1,000 bats. That'll be the second count when the young are flying

Steve Roe:
[25:35] So if there are listeners out here that are thinking, oh, I've got a church down the road from me, I want to go and see if there are bats there, what would you say is the best plan of action for them?

Ian Nixon:
[25:44] If you can get into the church, have a look around, look for droppings. They're fairly obvious, probably not as obvious as they are here. But yes, have a look for droppings. The people that all know about the bats are the people that are involved with the church. And they'll be able to tell you yes we have bats no we don't have bats and you'll get various various attitudes towards them they have and then ask if you're able to stay outside and see them coming out

Steve Roe:
[26:17] Brilliant so just before we go get set up for tonight how did you first get involved in bat conservation

Ian Nixon:
[26:23] I worked for a consultancy an ecology consultancy they needed a some surveyors to get their new licenses the only way that fsc would run the course was that there were five people on the course there were three in the office one other person had joined it so they needed a fifth so they said would i go so yes i've been doing health and safety with new surveys anyway and then they said oh by the way we're going to do a back course on the day on the way up to do the newt course and it was with Phil Richardson and Phil introduced me to a long-eared roost and then we found some whiskered bats in a little mine and then we watched Noctuals and Dolbentons at night and I just got hooked. From there things had progressed slightly.

Steve Roe:
[27:17] Brilliant. Right, shall we get set up? Whilst Ian and his volunteers got their kit set up for the evening to count the bats leaving the church at dusk, I took a moment to walk around the church and could hear the audible roost chatter of the Dorbenton's roost towards the rear of the church. As the bats began to emerge from the roof, they fly around inside the church, which gave me an opportunity to record the sound of their wings as their numbers grew and they head for the exit points. So Ian, your team of eight volunteers, you've just been counting them, just packed away and we're stood in the porch of the church and the bats are just starting to return, presumably to feed the pups. What's the grand total? Have you managed to count them up yet?

Ian Nixon:
[28:34] We've not got a final total, but out of this door there were 797 and then we think 35 went back in. There's about 760 and 240 at least out of the west door and then another 11 or so out of one of the new mitigation features so we're over the thousand

Steve Roe:
[29:00] So how are the volunteers telling the difference between the Sopranos and Daubenton's and any other species that are coming out of the church then?

Ian Nixon:
[29:07] Using the detectors so you can hear the sort of wet slap of the the pipistrelles up 55kHz, because these are sopranos. And then the dry clicks on the Daubenton's down around 40(kHz).

Steve Roe:
[29:21] So is that sort of number what you're expecting for this sort of time of year then?

Ian Nixon:
[29:25] It's slightly up on what I was expecting. As is usual, the church has now gone up again, which is, like I say, it's sort of booking the trend elsewhere. So many churches would go to, they'd seen a drop in numbers. But here, it's going up again.

Steve Roe:
[29:43] Brilliant. Ian Nixon, thank you very much.

Ian Nixon:
[29:45] You're welcome.

Steve Roe:
[29:47] Thank you to everyone who appeared in this episode, David, Eileen, Sheila and Ian. And if you're new to the podcast and want to hear more about Bats in Churches, take a listen to episode 23 from season two, where I spoke to Barry Collins, who was mentioned by Ian in this episode.

Steve Roe:
[30:03] In the show notes, you'll find links to pictures of Ilene's artwork on A Wing and a Prayer, as well as the Bats in Churches project page. I'll be back in two weeks time coming to you from Hampshire, where a member of the bat group there is on a mission to restore a historic bat detector.

Steve Page:
[30:18] So this thing was kind of just sitting there almost unloved but cherished all the same because it belonged to Andrew Watson. Andrew was a great guy who was with the founder member of the Hampshire Backroot amongst others. There's a hefty speaker on it which would do your granny's radio proud. There's some coils, there's a robust obvious time volume control with switch on it.