Potentially Poisonous Spider ID Please!!!

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ELBF91 London, United Kingdom May 12, 2016

Hello,

I have recently noticed that this spider appears to have made a nest in a grating in that side of my house, that leads to a fan that comes out in the bathroom. It is nowhere to be seen during the day ( I assume it goes inside the house :( ) but in the evening it comes and sits just in the hole of the outside grating through the night, as shown in the pictures. It is always gone again when I wake up in the morning. As I can only see it when it is dark I didn't notice until I took these photos today just how menacing it looks.

If anyone could share an ID or any ideas/advice I would be hugely grateful!!

Thanks very much in advance!

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ELBF91 London, United Kingdom May 12, 2016

I forgot to say, I live in London and have never seen any spider that looks like this before so not 100% sure how to deal with it. I don't really want to disturb it but I would much rather it didn't lay eggs in my house!

Thanks again :)

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Flapdoodle Minot, ND May 12, 2016

Looks like a tube web spider. They tend to stay outdoors; bite reported to be quite painful but not dangerous - see http://www.uksafari.com/florentina.htm for details.
Almost all spiders are venomous to some degree, but only a handful of species truly are dangerous to humans (and none of those are native to Great Britain). See the 'sticky' on spider bites at the top of this forum.

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ELBF91 London, United Kingdom May 13, 2016

Thanks very much for your help on this! :)

The pictures look pretty spot on but the only thing is that links says that the biggest is the female which can reach 25ish mm, this spider is at least 50-60mm! Does the size mean just the body or the whole thing from end to end?

Do you know of anyway I could lure it out into the open to get better pics or do you think it's best to just leave alone? If it lays eggs will the young invade my house or move on?

Sorry for all the questions and thanks for any further help!

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Flapdoodle Minot, ND May 13, 2016

First off, the lengths stated for this species refers to the body only, not the leg span. I know of some spiders having a body length in the range of 25 mm that have a leg span approaching 100 mm!
These spiders usually emerge from their retreats when they detect prey activity, so you might try gently 'tickling' any web strands just outside its tunnel with a long thin stalk of grass or similar object to see if that will elicit a response from the spider. It might be best if someone else does this while you concentrate on having your camera focused on the spot whee you hope the spider will appear.
There is extremely little risk of these spiders moving indoors; I don't think that you have to worry about that.

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