Bloodsuckers' home for sale

The small castellated house is just two metres high

A building once used by country doctors to store bloodsucking leeches is on the market in North Yorkshire.

Leech House, near Bedale, which has a quarter of an acre of gardens, was built about 200 years ago and is thought to have been used for storing leeches until the early 1900s.

The small building, just 3.25 metres by 3.07 metres, was restored by the Bedale District Heritage Trust in 1985 and is now being sold as the trust is being wound up.

Nigel Foster, from estate agents George F White, expects it will fetch around £20,000.

Special containers

"The most likely market is as a summer house," he says. "A glorified garden shed to escape the rigours of daily life."

Leeches are bloodsucking relatives of the earthworm and at one time were widely used to draw blood from patients suffering from almost any ailment.

Although there is no indication of how leeches were stored in Leech House, it is thought there would have been special containers of moist turf, moss and water.

A fireplace would have given heat to ensure the containers did not freeze in winter.

At the moment, the public can wander round the grounds and peer in through the windows.

Mr Foster says any buyer might want to exploit the gardens for selling teas in summer as the house is only 50 metres from the terminus of the newly-reopened Wensleydale Railway.