Cedar Hollow Dorset
Thirteen acres of West Dorset, worked as a craft wood before it was ever a place to stay.
Thirteen acres on the corner where Dorset, Devon and Somerset meet, worked as a craft wood long before anyone stayed the night in it.
Cedar Hollow Dorset was Guy Mallinson's woodland workshop first. The treehouses came later, built by the woodworker who owns the wood, with Brownlie Ernst and Marks; all three have taken RIBA South West awards since.
That order of events is the whole point. The wood is still managed as a wood, and the buildings are sized to fit inside that rather than the other way round.
Thirteen acres is small enough to know individually, and it is managed that way. Standing deadwood is left wherever it is safe to leave it.
The oldest part of the wood, below Pinwheel, is kept off-path. Bluebells take years to recover from being walked on, so the route goes around them.
Logs for the stoves and pizza ovens come from the wood's own thinnings, and the ash from the stoves goes back into the wood.
Three treehouses sleeping two apiece, across thirteen acres. The site is quiet because there is almost nobody on it.
Heavily insulated buildings that come up to temperature quickly and have been standing since 2016 and 2020. The greenest building is the one not rebuilt.
Bins at ground level take glass, recycling, food waste and general waste separately, with the breakdown written up in the guest information.
Cedar Hollow Dorset does not hold a Green Tourism award. Our Oxfordshire woodland does, and we would rather say plainly which site it belongs to than let one stand in for both.
What Dorset has instead is a wood that was managed for craft timber before it was a business, and three buildings whose architecture has been assessed and awarded on its own terms.
Most of what keeps the wood intact is simple, and our guests do most of it already.