A green hotel

Battlesteads are committed to providing the greenest possible environment while ensuring the maximum comfort for our guests. We hope you share our appreciation of locally sourced food, consideration of our individual carbon footprint, joy of wildlife and the natural flaura and fauna of Northumberland.

We are proud to hold a Gold Award from the Green Tourism Business Scheme and we are highly rated in the popular Alistair Sawday Guides to both the UK and Europe. Recently we won the national Award for 'Excellent Social Responsibility' from the industry leaders' HRS Hotel Excellence Awards.

Green for 'go' at Battlesteads

We are continually expanding our green endeavours to ensure that your stay in the hotel has the minimum environmental impact.

All lighting uses low-energy light bulbs resulting in the whole hotel using less energy for lighting than the bar area alone in 2006.

Our ethos is that its always better to work with the environment than to fight against it. Northumberland is one of the least spoiled areas of the country in terms of traffic impact, light pollution and urban sprawl - lets keep it that way!

Battlesteads features an innovative woodchip burning biomass boiler which supplies heating and hot water to the entire hotel using sustainable fuel from forestry only 1 mile away, meaning virtually carbon neutral!

The surplus heat generated is used to heat our polytunnels which provide herbs and salad vegetables even in winter months. We also have herb gardens and salad gardens on either side of the main garden area. Planting of soft fruits and root vegetables is continuing in our kitchen garden throughout 2009/10. Rainwater is captured in our new tank to provide water for the entire garden and planters.

The walled garden you can see from the conservatory is specially planted to encourage wildlife - the boilerhouse has a bat box and an owl box, we have lots of bird-feeders to encourage the many smaller species in the area; see how many you can identify - we have binoculars in the conservatory to help you.

Badgers, foxes, herons and red squirrels (we support red squirrels) are frequently reported and a family of otters can be seen in early morning on the river next to the bridge. In spring you can view displays of wild garlic and the most amazing vistas of bluebells - we encourage you to report any interesting sightings in our guest log.

Please ask about local walks and places of interest.

Enjoy your stay and tell us about your finds and adventures!

BATTLESTEADS has a GOLD award from the Green Tourism Business Scheme

Battlesteads is officially one of the greenest hotels in the UK - despite being housed in an 18th century farmstead the hotel is firmly placed in the 21st century with a state-of-the-art woodchip burning heating and hot water system, locally sourced food from award winning suppliers, our own polytunnels growing fresh herbs and vegetables and lots more