Pest Control Tenterden

A high street that makes its living from visitors, in buildings four hundred years older than the trade in them.

Food premises in old buildings

What You Cannot Simply Seal

A modern kitchen is a box with known openings. A kitchen inserted into a building with a timber frame, an inserted floor and four centuries of alteration behind it is not: there are voids between the units and the old fabric, service routes nobody drew, and a party structure shared with the shop next door.

Three things follow, and they come up constantly on this high street.

What arrives in your kitchen may not have started there. Voids run between units in buildings of this age, so a problem three doors down is your problem too. A written finding is what gets the neighbouring business or the landlord to act.

The bin area is usually the real cause. These buildings were not designed with a service yard, so waste ends up in a shared alley or a small rear court. Proper containers with lids that close, on a hard swept surface, emptied often enough in summer, will do more than any treatment.

And what you may do to the fabric is limited. Much of the high street is listed, so proofing that affects the character of a building can need consent, and a tenant may need the landlord’s agreement as well. We set out what needs doing and who has to approve it, in writing, so it can be taken to them.

The visitor trade adds one more: a seasonal spike. Late summer means more covers, more waste and a reliable wasp season off the vineyards and orchards, all at once.