Our dedicated Hertfordshire log facility is amongst the few with the proper authority for the storage and processing of timber.

4 acre log storage & processing yard

Whilst our timber yard may not sound terribly important at first it is what distinguishes our log business from so many others. Our timber yard, just outside Harpenden in Hertfordshire, comprises of 4 acres of hard standing.

Once we have felled hardwood timber we transport the trees to our yard and stack the timber to commence its 2-4 years of seasoning, very often we'll reach capacity and so we have another Hertfordshire timber yard on the Brockett Estate that acts as our overspill yard.

A dedicated log facility

To process timber into firewood logs you don't need a license and this means that there's a lot of businesses that trade without the proper authority. We fought long and hard to secure the correct change of use for our land from agricultural to forestry and storage of timber, getting this change of use took us 30 years to secure. This means that we have secured our way of doing business for the future.

So many online log guys don't even touch the logs they sell, they just ship in bulk into the docks and sell it out of containers.

Our business trades traditionally and, as a rural trade, obviously all the wood we process into firewood logs comes out of predominantly green areas or certainly very heavily rural areas but our business is still classed as commercial usage because we're retailing to the general public but in order to season and process logs you must have the proper premises (a bit like an abattoir, really) and we're probably one of the very few log businesses that will have the correct authority for doing what we're doing on our premises.

If you were a landowner that had a pile of wood stockpiled on the farm or the estate upon which it grew, you could store the timber and process it into firewood logs for the personal use of that farm, that estate or that house. As soon as you go into the category of retailing and commercial usage, you need a commercial site and, like us, you will have to go through a change of usage application. Because you're doing a change of use within an area of outstanding natural beauty and/or green belt, it is seriously difficult to secure and it's taken us 30 years. This is why you'll find some timber stored on an old derelict railway line because it's got commercial use and you go for an easier change of use or you store timber on an old sawmill site, most of which have been developed into swanky houses now so, if you don't have the correct authority, you really are snookered.

It wouldn't surprise us to find that 99% of our competition will be inappropriately trading out of a farm or a builder's yard or something.

It's just luck of the wind that businesses such as these haven't been picked up by the local authority. We have obtained full planning permission, no restrictions, to store, process timber and distribute firewood logs throughout Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and the Home Counties from our authorised and fully legal site here in Hertfordshire.

Locally sourced firewood logs

When you buy logs from us it's important to us that you know that you're buying firewood logs direct from the people that felled the tree from which the seasoned logs are cut from.

You can buy logs online from many websites these days so we feel it's important for buyers of logs to know that many log websites are acting as a middle-man buying-in and shipping it out, whereas we are managing woodland, encouraging the ecology and conscientiously harvesting. We're doing the job. Simple as that really. We're cutting and delivering logs traditionally and sustainably, the way it's been done for countless generations.