There's a chance to meet 1000 church bats in a fundraiser to help their survival.

The Soprano Pipistrelle Bats need your help at St Edmund's Church, Egleton, and the Leicester and Rutland Bat Group is staging an experience next Tuesday, August 31, at 7.15pm.

The church event, featuring bat ecologist Matt Cook, will feature watching the bats emerge from the church at dusk, learning how to use a bat detector and walking around the village looking for bats.

The event is free but supported by the Bats in Churches project and funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund. It hopes to raise funds towards the £5000 Egleton church is seeking towards a bat mitigation project.

A JustGiving Page has been set up, which reveals hundreds of pounds have been raised so far.

It explained: "A small church with a big bat population of over 1000 Soprano Pipistrelles. St Edmund's Egleton, Rutland, a Grade 1 listed church, urgently needs financial support to create safe spaces for bats to prevent them from dying unnecessarily in the church."

The appeal continued: "St Edmund's has been a vital maternity home for female soprano pipistrelles and their offspring over many years. Numbers have now grown to more than a 1,000 as the church provides an ideal resting place during the summer months being close to the feeding ground around Rutland Water.

"St Edmund's is a small historic church with striking Norman carvings which has been seriously affected by bat urine and faeces. Bats enter the church through cracks in the roof beams and find it difficult to escape. It is distressing for visitors to come across dead bats and this has been exacerbated by a recent failure to the ceiling plaster.

"Egleton Church continues to serve the community through regular services but the demand for finances to maintain this Grade 1 listed building is enormous (including replacement of the chancel roof). Please help us to find the money to undertake the approved and urgent work to seal the church interior so that the bats have a safe environment and that the many visitors can enjoy a clean church.

"With your help we hope to have this work in place by April 2022. Thank you. "