Spider ID please

[Magic147]

Hello, first time on here and what an amazing website!

I live in Leeds, W. Yorkshire, and we have recently been having quite a lot of spiders coming into the house and the shed, all similar in appearance, so I wondered what they could be. I know it's difficult without a picture, but the spider is fairly small and my camera will not focus on it to pick out the detail.

It's about a centimetre in length and mainly light brown in colour, with patches of dark brown/black. These patches occur on the ends of its mandibles (I think they're called that!), on the top of the head, on the top of the abdomen, and in very distinct spots along all of the legs. The front legs are noticeably longer than the rest, and it adopts a very long and thin stance when not moving.

The nearest I've been able to find in appearance is here... Liocranidae
... Liocranidae, although the legs on this spider seem to be thinner and the markings more distinct, plus the front legs are much longer. Also, the abdomen is darker with a less distinct pattern, the head is light with a dark patch on top, and the mandibles seem thinner with more obvious bigger parts on the end.

Hope you can help!

[Meta menardi]

The mandibles you mention sound like the palps, since it seems to have a swollen end to it this means it is a male ( the palps are used by the males to inseminate the female). From your description, I can't go much further, but it sounds like a male. The fact it has stripy legs, that does cut it down a bit, but apart from that many markings are quite variable.