Under the Thatch is a selection of holiday homes we hope you'll love – simply gorgeous places to stay that stand out from crowd. We're delighted to be recognised as one of the top ethical travel companies in the UK - putting profits into building rescue projects, and with a fair pricing policy that achieves maximum year-round occupancy.

We aim to provide exceptional self-catering holiday experiences in every sector of the holiday market - from top-end luxury to tiny rustic cottages and cabins. We're particularly well known for providing historic and unique properties that are managed in an ethically responsible and sustainable way – we drop prices in low season to maximise occupancy, resulting in what must be the highest occupancy rates in the industry.

If you have a property that you may be interested in letting with us, contact us.

• Winner - Ethical Travel Award (Guardian/Observer, against international competition)
• Best Tourism Business – Wales Sustainability Awards
• Best Tourism Business – Ceredigion Business Awards
• Best Environmental Business – Ceredigion Business Awards

• See a 1 minute video about why we’re different
• 'Top 50 Fabulous Places to Stay in the World' Sunday Times
• The Ecologist named us their Hero of the Month
• The Scotsman says we’re one of UK’s most ‘responsibly minded operators’
• The Observer says we’re a ‘gorgeous collection of places to stay’
• 'Top 15 Green Places to Stay in UK' Guardian
• 5* - Eco Hotels of the World
• The Civic Trust commends our restoration work
• Guardian names us in Best UK Hotels of the Decade

Under the Thatch is owned by architectural historian Dr Greg Stevenson, who has written about and worked in building conservation for the past 18 years. Greg is best known in Wales as presenter on TV series ‘Y Ty Cymreig’, in England he was series consultant for BBC Restoration. He is Trustee of the Carmarthenshire Building Preservation Trust and Honorary Research Fellow for the University of Wales. He runs the company from a remote cottage in Co. Donegal, NW Ireland.

Our manager is Spot Scott, the booking office is managed by Carole Hallett in Rhydlewis, West Wales, and Martin Rose provides our website. Restoration projects are currently underway in Wales and Ireland, with a further project planned across Europe.

Under the Thatch was established in 2001 to find a viable end-use for a cottage that we rescued from collapse - Ffynnon Oer Isaf. The success of this first project soon led to the next... and the next and before long we’d snowballed into a substantial social enterprise. In 2005 we took on our first ‘agency’ cottage, using the profits to help fund the restoration work of the company, and since then this side of the business has grown whenever we’ve found owners that share our ethos, and have properties that stand out from the crowd.

1. We’ve got a selection of self-catering properties to take your breath away.
2. Profits are used to maintain historic buildings which have higher than average maintenance costs due to the use of specialist conservation building products.
3. Profits are also used to rescue new buildings - purchase and renovation.
4. Our prices are what we consider fair and reasonable. We aren't cheap, but we regularly undercut the competition.
5. We have some of the most sustainably managed holiday accommodation in the UK.
6. We probably have the best selection of unusual and quirky accommodation on our books.
7. We price much of our accommodation according to the number of people staying - so if you are a small group you don't pay over the odds to stay in a larger cottage.
8. We open several of our buildings to pre-arranged guided tours for various local community groups from school-children to the Women's Institute.
9. We provide illustrated lectures to try and encourage others to undertake rescue projects and authentic conservation work.
10. We have an exceptionally high occupancy rate that leads from our flexible pricing – working hard to keep properties full, and with community benefit all year round.
11. We employ local people to conserve and maintain our properties, and do not use any outside agencies.
12. We source local tradesmen and women in the restoration of our properties, and prefer to use freelancers who then take their newly-gained conservation skills with them to other jobs.
13. We believe in repairing buildings rather than reconstructing them, wherever possible.
14. We will never take a home out of the community and convert it to holiday use. Instead we bring derelict or unused buildings and renovate them so that they are of economic benefit to their local community.
15. We use traditional crafts and materials in our building conservation. This means we use lime instead of cement, limewash instead of acrylic emulsions, local hedgerow timber is used for roof repairs, and gorse cut from the local fields.
16. We endeavour to use environmentally friendly materials in our building work, such as sheepswool insulation rather than fibreglass, limecrete rather than concrete, linseed-oil based paints etc.
17. We aim to run the business in a way that minimises its environmental impact. Our office is paperless, we have ‘green’ hosting for the website, and we try and bring sustainability into all major decisions.