A church and a private house in the village of Grosmont have become home to hundreds of bats.

The little creatures that like to hang upside down, are welcome visitors to St Cadoc's Church and Part y Seal House, where owners Jeanette and Fred Ong have seen numbers rise from around 50 to nearly 100 last year.

When building work began on the church in 2002, its colony of Lesser Horseshoe bats was taken into account at every stage so that they could continue their nocturnal lifestyle undisturbed.

The group increased from 95 in 1994 to 116 ten years later, with a further 30 more joining the colony at the latest count.

The roost in the church is in the nave roof where around half the colony give birth in the summer, before most of them leave by October.

Part y Seal, which has Elizabethan origins, is set in parkland near the River Monnow. Its family of bats was first found in 1989 when the property was about to be sold by the occupier who had been living in harmony with the tiny creatures.

She told the visiting bat worker that the back door was never closed to allow them to fly around the house after coming out of the attic at dusk to feed.

New owners Jeanette and Fred found that they shared the house in 1989 with 40 Lesser Horseshoes and 20 juveniles, with a small colony of long-eared bats and 200 pipistrelles.

The Ongs, who do their own count in June each year, follow the Eastern view of bats as "creatures of good fortune and bringers of happiness."