About Us
The Green represents the result of the family dream of Aurelius, Claire and Julian, to offer traditional English hospitality in a luxurious historical country house. Aurelius grew up in his father’s Michelin-starred hotel and has worked in top end hospitality for 30 years and ran the award-winning Hausbar in Bristol. Claire has brought a passion for design and a love of nature to the renovation of The Green and its gardens. Julian is an eternal traveler who focuses on the details of the guest experience and shaping the overall vision for The Green.
We have renovated this fine 8-bedroom Regency/Victorian residence and garden, located just outside Bradford-on-Avon, and have furnished it with period antiques and some portraits of former occupants. It offers our guests an ideal base for enjoying the English countryside and visiting historic homes, gardens and other attractions in Bath, Wiltshire and Somerset.
Brief History
The Green was built sometime before 1697, most likely by a Wiltshire wool merchant. Trowbridge was one of the major wool towns in Britain at that time, and wool was one of the mainstays of the national economy – as can be seen if you visit the nearbyTrowbridge museum. The house was modernised and expanded in the 1820s, and again in the 1860s (in Jacobean style) by leading wool merchant, John Bayfield Clark (1823-98) . It was then described as “a very commodious and substantially built dwelling house … fit for the residence of a genteel family…with a four-stall stable, large coach-house, brewhouse, milk-house and other convenient outhouses and offices; pleasure and kitchen gardens, and four fields of excellent pasture land.”
The Green was later bought by the diplomat and international financier, Sir Vincent Caillard (1856-1930), whose father Judge Camille Caillard, was the nephew of a Cuban marquis, and owned neighbouring Wingfield House. Among several diplomatic achievements, he restructured the finances of the Ottoman Empire and raised the finance for the first Aswan Dam in Egypt, before becoming director of Vickers, Son & Maxim in 1900, one of the world's largest armaments firms at the time. He secured for Vickers the rebuilding of the Turkish fleet in 1914, which ultimately led to the Ottoman Empire entering the war on the side of Germany after the UK government seized two of the ships. Sir Vincent’s second wife, Lady Zoe took to spiritualism and published two books of his thoughts from beyond the grave including: 'A New Conception of Love' (1934), received by means of a so-called communigraph (akin to an Ouija board). We encourage visitors to imagine the variety of conversations which went on at the Green among the family, their guests and maybe their deceased ancestors!
The house stayed in the family until we acquired it in 2018 from Michael Copland-Griffiths, a distinguished chiropractor whose father Lt. Cdr. Charles Copland-Griffiths planted most of the trees in our arboretum.
Living Green
The renovation project
Minimising greenhouse gas emissions: the construction industry accounts for 2% of global carbon emissions and the original construction accounts for 50% of a hotel’s lifetime emissions. By rehabilitating an existing building we have saved around 5kg of CO2e/room/night compared with the carbon cost of staying in a new purpose-built hotel in the UK, and even more if your alternative was an overseas trip.
Thanks to a thoughtful neighbour, we were also able to relocate and rebuild their old Victorian greenhouse using original materials rather than buy a new one made from non-natural materials.
We plan to install an electric vehicle charging station. Our rooms do not have GHG-emitting air conditioning because old country houses were designed to stay cool in summer. Almost all of our furnishings are antiques or upcycled pieces which have been lovingly reclaimed, restored or repurposed. Our heating and hot water boiler is fuelled by wood pellets sourced from sustainable forests, which proved to be the most viable option after two years of study.
Managing the garden and grounds
We love trees. We have planted over 200 new trees and shrubs in our woodland and gardens since we bought the property. We employ expert arborists (tree surgeons) to keep our mature trees in good condition and conserve this natural habitat. Unfortunately trees don’t live forever and when we had to fell our beloved cherry tree we gave it a new purpose by using the wood to make the kitchen dresser. Our woodland paths are surfaced with waste wood chips donated by tree surgeons.
We rehabilitated our large pond, which had dried out, as water is essential for biodiversity. We have two wells and are planning to install several rainwater tanks to limit our use of mains water. We don’t allow dogs in the grounds in order to make them safer for birds, hedgehogs, hares and deer who visit regularly.
Running the business
We use recyclable and recycled products where we can, from bamboo toothbrushes (if you have forgotten to bring yours) to brown cardboard (used in the compost) and are open to new suggestions.
We sort our waste and all organic waste is converted to compost in our eight “fast” compost bays, one “slow” compost bay and four leaf mulch bays.
We provide filtered water in the rooms to minimize the use of plastic. We maximise our use of local, sustainable suppliers, including our own garden and we practice “No Dig Gardening” which avoids disturbing the soil and its inhabitants and use our own homemade compost. We use Bramley soaps, which have only natural ingredients and are vegan and cruelty free, with refillable bottles.
