Clevedon Hall

Clevedon Hall is a Grade II* listed house on Elton Road in Clevedon, North Somerset, built in 1850 by the Bristol architects Foster and Wood for the sugar refiner Conrad Finzel, who called it Frankfort Hall. The garden front is seven bays of coursed stone in the Jacobethan manner, with shaped gables, stone-mullioned bay windows and an arcaded loggia, and it looks over lawns, a lake, a wildflower meadow and a fountain topped by a statue of Hebe. John McCarthy has run it as a private event house since 2009, and a full refurbishment added the orangery and the bedrooms.

The house is taken whole. The Evening Celebration gives exclusive use of the Hall and the estate from five until midnight, with a dance floor and breakfast the next morning, and the events team plans gala dinners and parties that run over two or three days. There are 25 bedrooms in the house, sleeping up to 65 guests, and a cottage in the grounds, and no other bookings share the property while you have it. The house seats 150 for dinner and holds 250 for an evening party, and the lawn takes a marquee for a larger seated dinner.

The Grand Library, panelled in dark timber and lined with books, seats 124 at round tables. The Great Hall has a carved timber gallery and painted landscape walls, the Orangery seats 150 under a glass roof beside the garden, and the Dame Rosa Burden Room, with two bay windows onto the lawns, suits a smaller dinner. There is room on the grounds to land a helicopter, and Bristol Airport is about 20 minutes by road.