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It seems we were both wrong, I stumbled across the Natural History Museum's Identification Service yesterday and emailed a pic. They responded by lunchtime which was impressive!!
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/take-part/centre-for-uk-biodiversity.html
They are ash bark beetle, Hylesinus varius. They asked if we had any logs in the house (which we have!).
I took a look and you can see where they have come from:
Apparently they only live in ash bark and don't attack any other wood (so no panic for the furniture!). The logs have gone out now until the winter.
This little spider was in the log basket and must be well fed!
@ColinTheBald - that is a great specimen!
eskay
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It seems we were both wrong, I stumbled across the Natural History Museum's Identification Service yesterday and emailed a pic. They responded by lunchtime which was impressive!!
Ack, well that's good news at least! I had an invasion in a bedroom in a flat once. Vax shampoo over and over and the numbers dropped, but you'd still see the odd one creep up the wall.
The ID service is so good, isn't it! It was mostly manned by voluntary work experience / uni students when I got to hang out there and the queue to get a placement was very long.
Yukirin
Yep, furniture carpet beetle. Check under the soft furniture for the remains of the pupa or if you have a healthy number of spiders you might find the sucked dry remains of the larvae too.