Addington Hills is a public open space in the London Borough of Croydon. It has some heathland on the summit plateau with extensive woodland on the slopes. The plateau contains Scots Pine and Birch that encroach on the slopes with Oak becoming progressively more frequent lower down. The slopes are eroded to form a number of deep gullies where many of the bat boxes are erected.

Pete Guest, a former member of London Bat Group and inspirational figure in the bat world, was responsible for gaining funding for 100 bat boxes as a mitigation measure for the passing of Croydon Tramlink through the western edge of the site.

They were erected in 2000, with three boxes on each tree to let the bats choose the most favourable conditions. Two types of boxes were used: wood and woodcrete (a wood and concrete mix). After they were erected, they were inspected for a few years but no bats were found. However in 2007 bats were finally found during a routine inspection by the bat group! Since then there have been regular inspections with bats seen on every visit (see data at the end of this article).

When the wooden boxes were over ten years old some were showing their age. London Bat Group was awarded funding from Viridor Credits under the Landfill Communities Fund for over £2000. With the grant, we replaced twenty rotten wooden boxes, erected six new bat boxes of different designs, cleared vegetation around the trees and lowered some woodcrete boxes that nobody liked inspecting because they were too high. We are very grateful to Viridor Credits that allowed this work and hope that the bats are just as appreciative.

In 2025 LBG has again funded a number of replacement bat boxes (Schwegler 2F bat boxes) to keep this long term project going strong! They were installed during the April box check. A limited number of places are always made available to LBG members to attend bat box checks at the site, led by Steven Lofting – keep an eye on members’ emails and the upcoming activities pages for when the next check will be!

For information on other projects funded by LBG, as well as how to get in touch if you have ideas for new projects that the bat group could get involved in, please click here.

Data collated from bat box checks at Addington Hills

	Brown long-eared	Noctule	Leisler’s	Common pipistrelle	Soprano pipistrelle
Spring 2007	3
Autumn 2008	14	1	2
Spring 2010	15
Autumn 2011	3	11
Spring 2012	14	16
Autumn 2012		3
Autumn 2013		1	3
Spring 2014	14	4
Spring 2015	16	1
Autumn 2015
Autumn 2015	4
Autumn 2016	9
Spring 2017	12	1		1
Autumn 2017	13	1
Spring 2018	7	1
Autumn 2018	2	2
Spring 2019	8
Autumn 2019	1				3