Living Green

The renovation project

We began work on the main house in 2021 with the idea of re-creating a beautiful country house and grounds which would be a home to our family as well as a business we believe in, and enable us to use the space to its full potential. We stripped away any modern additions in order to create reception rooms for entertaining and beautiful guest rooms each with its own character and charm. We wanted to minimise any changes and restore rather than add to the building being mindful of the environment and particularly of the waste often generated during projects of this kind.

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 the alternative was an overseas trip. The construction industry accounts for 2% of global carbon emissions and the original construction typically accounts for 50% of a hotel’s lifetime emissions.

We had always planned to use period furniture at the centre of our interior design. Almost all of our furnishings are antiques or upcycled pieces which have been lovingly reclaimed, restored or repurposed. Some have been kindly lent to us by past owners. Nothing has been wasted: spare floorboards have been used in many ways from the kitchen work table, to shelves and plinths. The fantastically large bath in our Bayfield suite has been re-enamelled and the taps refinished.

Our rooms do not have GHG-emitting air conditioning because old country houses were designed to stay cool in summer.  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. Although we hope you will be impressed by the comfort and luxury of the house you won’t find a minibar fridge in your bedroom. We provide filtered water in the rooms to minimize the use of plastic.

In the near future we plan to install an electric vehicle charging station.

We use recyclable and recycled products where we can, from bamboo toothbrushes (if you have forgotten to bring yours) to biodegradable shower caps made from corn starch and are always open to new suggestions.  We use Bramley soaps, which have only natural ingredients and are vegan and cruelty free, with refillable biodegradable bottles.

Prior to work starting on the house, we spent several years working on the grounds and in particular the kitchen garden where we will continue to plant with the intention of producing our own fruit and vegetables to use in our dishes. 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 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 maximise our use of local, sustainable suppliers, including our own garden where we practice  “No Dig Gardening” which avoids disturbing the soil and its inhabitants and use our own homemade compost.

On our very first visit to The Green we fell in love with the variety of trees already established. Since buying the property we have planted over 200 further trees and shrubs in our woodland and gardens. We employ expert arborists  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 and this has led to an amazing variety of fungi appearing in the grounds.

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.