Hill Holt Wood
Our principal consultant, Nigel Lowthrop, will be known to many for his and his wife Karen’s, remarkable achievements at Hill Holt Wood, to the south of Lincoln. Together they transformed a 35 acre ancient woodland into a nationally renowned rural social enterprise, ‘Hill Holt Wood’, and gained groundbreaking planning permission for an off-grid family home within the wood
Hill Holt Wood Woodland Paths and Statue
The 35 acre woodland, when initially bought in 1995 was in decline having been heavily felled by the previous owners and had an income potential limited to rough game shooting. Nigel and Karen however established the social enterprise ‘Hill Holt Wood’, which utilised the wood as a venue for alternative education and training, primarily working with young people excluded from mainstream education. Hill Holt Wood is now a community controlled charity and social enterprise that will turn over in excess of £500,000 this year, employing 20 full time staff and is widely recognised as achieving groundbreaking success in a number of sectors, including putting the ancient woodland onto a path of environmental recovery.
Nigel and Karen also achieved planning consent for family home sited on an island in a lake within the ancient woodland. This house is ‘off-grid’ (completely self-sufficient) and has been featured in books and on television as a clear demonstration that to be ‘extreme green’ does not mean a level of suffering for your principles, but can be about a quality of life that also benefits the environment.
Hill Holt Wood has thus become of national exemplar of truly sustainable development and embodies the vision of SRM, in terms of how sustainable objectives encompassing social, environmental and economic concerns are within reach and can be achieved by thinking outside of traditional boundaries.