The Church
Gayton Thorpe is a picture perfect round tower church in a tiny village just outside King's Lynn.
The tower, which is actually D-shaped rather than round, is Saxon with an early Norman upper section.
The highlight of the church is the carved seven sacrament font, showing baptism, ordination, confession, mass, communion, marriage, the last rites and a Virgin and child on the eighth panel.
Gayton Thorpe is a beautiful, welcoming church and usually open for visitors at all times.
Our Work
Gayton Thorpe has one of the largest colonies of pipistrelle bats in Norfolk, with over 800 Common and Soprano Pipistrelles using the church.
The church have been working with Phil Parker, a local bat ecologist for many years to manage their bats. The project has helped to install new roosting space in the rafters, including relining the space with safe materials, added a wall top box in the nave eaves and built more boxes in the surrounding churchyard trees.
The work was initially very successful, with the majority of bats using the wall top box and the church was bat free for much of the first summer. Unfortunately the bats have continued to try to enter the church and have found their way in through holes in the roofing felt and by crawling throughout the roof space. This has led to some bats being trapped inside the church.
We are continuing to monitor the church to see if further blocking works would be worth carrying out.
Gayton Thorpe holds regular bats nights and other events to celebrate their bats and is open every day to visitors.
Gayton Thorpe Case Study Poster
Gayton Thorpe Fact Sheet
Gayton Thorpe Bat Mitigation Report 2019
Upcoming events
If you’d like to contact or find out more about the church, visit their page on A Church Near You