Ted's Hedgehog House
Ted's Hedgehog House
Hand-Built in the Clun Valley, South Shropshire
Ted Bramwell, seventy-four — two generations of hedge-layers before him, and thirty-eight winters writing down what became of every house he made. His father laid the hedges. Ted builds what had to replace them.
83 left · final run · no restock“Everybody thinks the job is to keep him warm. It isn’t. He doesn’t freeze — he starves, because he keeps waking up.”
What arrives at your door
Why one gets used — and a garden-centre box stands empty for years
A hibernating hedgehog surfaces a dozen times or more between November and March, and each waking burns three or four days of the fat he spent all autumn putting on. What wakes him is not cold — it is change. Every part of this house is built to hold still. “The job isn’t to be warm. It’s to leave him alone.”
An interior board set across and behind the opening, so the way in turns a corner. The hedgehog goes round it; the draught does not. A cat, a fox or a badger can reach in — none of them can reach round. “A straight tube is a wind tunnel with an animal at the end of it.”
Overlapping half-round larch battens with the bark still on, laid like tiles down a curve rather than flat. The curve throws the water off; the air trapped between the layers does the insulating. The whole roof lifts off in one piece for the spring clean.
34 by 19 centimetres across the base, 17 from the floor to the top of the arch — the size Ted arrived at after 38 winters of building them larger and smaller, and the size his ledgers say gets used. “Folk think bigger’s kinder. It isn’t. A big box is a cold box.”
A full larch floor across the whole footprint, where a great deal of what is sold has nothing there at all — four walls and a lid, set down on whatever is underneath. Damp is the commonest complaint about wooden hedgehog houses in this country, and nearly all of it comes up from below.
Block plane, drawknife and mallet instead of a router. No plywood, no roofing felt, no wire mesh, no chemical treatment anywhere on it. Every house is cut, planed and fitted by Ted himself — and once the shelves in that stone stable are clear, there is no second batch.
“People assume hedgehogs sleep somewhere secret. They don’t. We logged thousands of real nests and nearly half of them were simply under garden planting — the rest under sheds, in log piles, in compost heaps, beneath decking. Almost every one of those places is temporary: the border gets cut back in October, the wood pile is burned in November, the heap is turned in January. Meanwhile close-board fencing has shut the animals out of the gardens they used to cross. A well-made house solves both problems at once, but only if three things are right — a chamber that stays still rather than warm, a floor that keeps the ground out, and a way into the garden in the first place. Get those right and you have given him somewhere that is still there in March.”
Dr Alice Pemberton, Mammal Ecologist
Marches Wildlife Recording Group
Perfect for
Quality you can check yourself
- Untreated larch, bark left on — no plywood, no felt, no wire mesh, no stain, no preservative. Nothing to off-gas in a sealed chamber he sleeps in for four months.
- The baffle behind the doorway — the one detail that turns a hole in the front into a shelter, and the one almost nobody fits.
- A solid floor — turn it over and look. A great many hedgehog houses have nothing there at all.
- A roof that lifts off in one piece — because a house you cannot open is a house you can never clean.
- Final run, built by hand — every house made by Ted himself in Clun. Once the shelves are clear, there is no restock and no successor.
Money-Back Guarantee, No Deadline
Nothing about a hedgehog happens quickly, so the guarantee is not tied to a clock. Put it out and live with it. If the house is not everything you hoped — the larch, the roof, the weight of the thing — send it back for a full refund. One email is all it takes, and UK delivery is free.
A note on handmade variation and wild tenants: Every house is cut and fitted by hand from natural timber, so grain, bark, colour and small marks vary from one to the next — that is the mark of real handwork, not a fault. And hedgehogs are wild. Sited properly — along a bed edge or beside a shed, close to the house rather than banished to the far corner, entrance away from the prevailing wind — a house is often found within a season or two, but the timing belongs to the animal, not to us. Two things make far more difference than anything else, and both are free: cut a gap roughly 13 cm square at the bottom of one fence panel so he can get in at all, and put a shallow dish of water and a saucer of meaty cat food a few steps from the door. Never bread, and never milk — they cannot digest it. Late September into October is the best fortnight of the year to put one out. Once it is occupied, leave it completely alone until late March or early April, then lift the roof, old bedding out, dry leaves back in.
Product details
| Material | Untreated Shropshire larch, air-seasoned, with the bark left on the roof battens |
| Finish | Bare natural timber with a moss trim along the eaves — no paint, stain, sealant or preservative; weathers to silver-grey |
| Set contents | 1 hedgehog house with fitted baffle & lift-off roof · siting card · starter bedding |
| Dimensions (outer) | 34 × 19 × 17 cm (13.4 × 7.5 × 6.7 in) |
| Chamber | Arched, no corners; 17 cm from floor to the top of the arch |
| Entrance | Arched doorway 9.8 cm wide, with an offset baffle board directly behind it |
| Floor | Full larch base across the whole footprint — not an open bottom |
| Roof | Overlapping half-round bark battens on a curve; lifts off in one piece for cleaning |
| Suits | Adult and juvenile hedgehogs — a year-round shelter and a winter nest |
| Colour | Natural timber |
| Siting | Along a bed edge, beside a shed or at the end of a patio — close to the house, entrance away from the prevailing wind |
| Care | Almost none — one clean a year, late March or early April only. Never open an occupied house. |
| Made | Hand-built by Ted Bramwell in Clun, South Shropshire |
| Availability | Final run — 83 only, no restock · 4.9 ★ from 1,240 reviews |