Sustainability at Hylands Estate

In July 2019, Chelmsford City Council made a declaration of a Climate and Ecological Emergency with an ongoing commitment to make the council’s activities net zero by 2030. The ambition is to engage residents, community organisations, and businesses in contributing to a sustainable future for Chelmsford and the surrounding areas.

You can read about the Climate and Ecological Emergency Action Plan via the Love Your Chelmsford website, where reporting for council-wise initiatives is recorded.

Here at Hylands Estate, as well as looking after our buildings, we are surrounded by glorious parkland which is cared for by the Parks Services team at Chelmsford City Council. Together with this team, we are committed to making our beautiful house, stables, and grounds a green haven with sustainability and the environment at the forefront of our minds. This is especially important when we are reviewing procedures, engaging with external partners and suppliers, and booking in events which create high footfall to our destination.

Learn more below about our commitments to making sure Hylands Estate continues to thrive for years to come.

Our venue

As a beautifully renovated neo-classical villa, Hylands House and the nearby Stables are steeped in history with our story stretching back almost 300 years. As we look to the future, we are passionate about continuing the legacy of Hylands Estate and everything within it, and a major step on this journey is making our destination sustainable for future generations.

The exterior of Hylands House with the green front lawn in the foreground.

Biodiversity & Conservation

By working closely with Chelmsford City Council’s Parks team, we have built specialist information pages on our website which go into further detail on the biodiversity and conservation that takes place at Hylands Estate. A plan written by the park’s management team supplies a framework for us to work from and helps guide how we look after Hylands Estate for the benefit of our visitors now and in the future.

Activity includes tree planning initiatives, developing interpretation and information boards throughout the park, volunteer schemes, and the multimedia tour.

We are grateful to be working with partners on site that help bring this to life, including Hawthorn Heavy Horses, Hylands Forest School, and the Chelmsford Beekeepers.

Learn more

Things to do

There is an abundance of things to do at Hylands Estate that are low carbon, low cost, and high in education and enjoyment! These include geocaching, orienteering, a range of walks from easy to challenging, our History and Gardens multimedia tour, and our Open Estate Days.

You can find out more about how our journey has changed over the years on our History pages, via our souvenir book, or by visiting the historic exhibitions at our Open Estate Days.

Our What’s On has a variety of events to take part in or visit, from artist workshops to music festivals. We encourage our events partners and on-site artists to take on our sustainability ethos by providing green options for production and waste materials, choosing local traders and produce, and by spreading the word to their customers.

Things to see and do

Energy & Waste

Due to the age of Hylands House, it is a challenge to change some of the equipment and technology to make it completely net zero. We do, however, accept the challenge, and have been working to install the best solutions we can, as well as plan for the future.

We have a site-wide method for monitoring data from electricity use, as well as data from heating oil for the House and Stables. We link our energy consumption to energy management systems to review our use. We plan to install equipment in future to help us reduce our emissions and have completed a climate change risk assessment for Hylands Estate.

Our cleaning services are carbon literacy certified, using environmentally friendly products and water sourced from dehumidifiers. Suppliers used are selected with the same ethos as us, using no single-use plastic, and using vegan and cruelty free ingredients.

We only use lights throughout the house when necessary and close shutters to retain the heat. 80-90% of Hylands House and Grand Pavilion is now LED lighting, with plans to bring The Stables and car parks up to date.

Our oil-fired boilers are energy efficient and are well maintained. Our Grand Pavilion runs on electricity only.

Appropriate bins are placed throughout the venue. We use an ethical oil disposal company for the cooking oil used by our accredited suppliers.

Our visitors

To preserve the beauty of Hylands Estate, we’d like to encourage our customers, visitors, audiences, dog walkers, race runners, shoppers, artists, workshop participants – in fact, anyone who comes to visit us – to be Green Customers.

You can do this by applying some simple actions to keep our environment tidy, clean, and environmentally sustained.

Travelling to Hylands Estate

Our location makes it a challenge getting to us by public transport. You will need to take a bus or taxi from Chelmsford railway station or make time for a walk which can be quite a distance. If you are more local to us, we have put together some pleasant cycle routes you can use that will take you through some picturesque routes of the city.

Sustainable routes to Hylands

Use our recycle bins

If you have brought food along with you to visit Hylands Estate, please use the recycling bins provided outside The Stables and across the estate.

Purchase food onsite and shop local

You can be environmentally sustainable by using our onsite facilities – The Deli and The Deli Express are run by a small local business, and the products in The Stables Artists Shop are made on site by our resident artists.

Find out more about The Stables

Take your rubbish with you before you leave

If you are bringing something with you that needs to be specially disposed of, please consider how you will take it back with you.

A bicyclist and walker in the fields of the Estate with Hylands House in the background.

Our delegates

We encourage greener thinking for your business and meeting delegates by using more sustainable routes to travel to us, using our onsite facilities for food and drink, and enjoying a breath of fresh air in our beautiful parkland.

The Drawing Room set up for a corporate event with rows of chairs and a large screen up front.

Meetings & events

Hylands Estate is an ideal venue if your organisational goals include more environmental and sustainable targets. We use accredited caterers for business hires which include plant-based menus. We have the option of supplying your delegates with eco-friendly pads and pens. We use a local accredited supplier for your complex audio-visual needs, although we do have expertise inhouse. We can also provide virtual tours of the venue when you enquire, so you can leave the car at home and still enjoy a tour of the estate.

Business & Meeting hire

Materials & merchandise

As well as supplying eco-friendly conference materials, we extend our work on this into the materials we produce to promote the venue. Our Wedding Showcase gift bags are supplied with sustainable giveaways in jute bags. We take a digital-first approach before we print small runs of our brochures and flyers. We also use ecotex PVC material for our on-site banners you see at the entrance and car parks.

Our community

Working with our community is a vital part of keeping Hylands Estate as sustainable as possible. The connections and relationships we have with groups at the estate help keep our goals achievable and bring everyone together along the same journey.

Community Environmental Projects

We are grateful for the park and garden volunteers who put in the hard work alongside our Parks team and Head Gardener to make sure all the green areas you see at Hylands Estate are looking pristine and well maintained. Local further education centres, Thriftwood college for those with learning disabilities, and Chelmsford College, take part in extended learning on conservation and horticulture projects.

The Friends of Hylands House

As well as being a source of ideas and fundraising efforts to keep Hylands Estate’s key historical areas maintained, The Friends of Hylands House also run a second-hand bookshop based at The Stables. Books that are donated here are given new homes by visitors or are sustainably recycled. We assist this group with marketing and website support, and provide a range of benefits for the group and its members.

Friends of Hylands House website

Volunteers working in the flower beds in the Pleasure Garden.

Our suppliers

All our suppliers, including those with on-site premises, are required to submit sustainability polices as part of their tender applications. This includes The Deli, accredited caterers, and other accredited suppliers for events such as fireworks, audio visuals, and indoor special effects. They have been assessed against our sustainability goals and using Green Tourism’s sustainability screening.

We ask all caterers to use a new commercial food waste system as well as ethical cooking oil disposal. We use local tea and coffee suppliers for our inhouse events and meetings, with our corporate caterers Plenty of Thyme using local produce at their local premises.

Traders

We encourage the use of local traders for Urban Food Festival at our Open Estate Days and organise our own selection of local businesses for events like Christmas at the Stables. We ask third party event companies who hire the park such as Foodies Festival to book local companies, and any applications are required to supply sustainability information in their Event Management Plans.

Products

The products you find in our Artists Shop are all created by The Stables on-site artists, carrying the branding #MadeAtHylands. These items are, where possible, environmentally friendly or made from recycled materials. We also supply Hylands honey, which is made at the estate in the beehives managed by the Chelmsford Beekeepers.

Business partnerships

We are proud to be working with Go Ape, who opened their 35th centre at Hylands Estate in 2023 – the first in Essex! Go Ape hold their own environmental policy throughout the UK.

Learn more about Go Ape

Working with our partners

We also work closely with our colleagues at Chelmsford City Council to make sure processes are in line with all our sustainability goals. These teams include procurement, building services, parks, waste management and economic development.

Love Your Chelmsford

Love Your Chelmsford is a point of reference for ‘all things green’ in Chelmsford; providing inspiration, advice, options, and opportunities to access a programme of activities and events, to get actively involved in helping to address the Climate and Ecological Emergency and meet the carbon reduction challenges for the area.

Whether planning a visit to explore your local green space or looking for suggestions as to how to make ‘green lifestyle’ changes, Love Your Chelmsford encourages you to take direct responsibility and make a real difference in tackling the Climate and Ecological Emergency by choosing to live and work in a more environmentally responsible way for the benefit of current and future generations.

Visit Love Your Chelmsford

Beyond Hylands Estate

If you plan on being in the region for longer than a visit with us, there’s plenty to do to continue your stay in Chelmsford and Essex. From night life, hotel stays, events and high-quality restaurants, to coastal visits, tours, walks and family attractions. Visit our partner websites for more information and plan your stay.

Chelmsford For You

Visit Essex