Venues in The Cotswolds
Honey-stone villages from Chipping Norton and Burford to the Gloucestershire hills: manors, estates and country houses let whole, west of Oxford.
Ellenborough Park
The Cotswolds — Hotel
Up to 140 guests
A 15th-century Cotswold manor house on 90 acres above Cheltenham, let whole for weddings and celebrations, with a glass-roofed suite for 120 and panelled dining rooms.
Estelle Manor
The Cotswolds — Hotel
Up to 100 guests
A Jacobean-style country house and members' club near Eynsham, with a vaulted events hall, a malachite-green Chinese dining room and a walled-garden glasshouse for private occasions.
Buckland Manor
The Cotswolds — Hotel
Up to 45 guests
A 13th-century manor house near Broadway with ten acres of gardens and 15 rooms, let whole for house parties and celebrations of up to 45.
Thyme
The Cotswolds — Hotel
Up to 60 guests
A restored Cotswold manor farm with 31 bedrooms, a MICHELIN Guide restaurant in an old ox barn, and a 16th-century Tithe Barn for private dinners of up to 60.
Blenheim Palace
The Cotswolds — Estate
Up to 2,000 guests
The Dukes of Marlborough's baroque palace near Woodstock, where the Long Library seats 250 and the parkland takes marquees for much larger events.
Soho Farmhouse
The Cotswolds — Members' Club
Up to 120 guests
Soho House's farm estate outside Great Tew, with a barn for 120, a glasshouse by the walled garden and a velvet-seated screening barn. Every event space is hired through a member.
Foxhill Manor
The Cotswolds — Hotel
Up to 80 guests
An Arts and Crafts manor on the 500-acre Farncombe Estate above Broadway, taken whole with eight bedrooms and a ballroom for 60 at dinner and 80 for the party.
Dormy House Hotel & Spa
The Cotswolds — Hotel
Up to 150 guests
A 17th-century Cotswold farmhouse hotel above Broadway with 39 bedrooms, let whole for house parties of up to 150.
Badminton House
The Cotswolds — Estate
Up to 300 guests
The Duke of Beaufort's seat lets its West Wing, with Gibbs's North Hall seating 80 beneath Wootton's paintings, plus Kent's Worcester Lodge across the park.
Cowley Manor Experimental
The Cotswolds — Hotel
Up to 150 guests
An Italianate Cotswolds manor above a lake, redesigned by Dorothée Meilichzon and let whole with all 36 bedrooms for weddings, launches and birthdays.
Sudeley Castle
The Cotswolds — Estate
Up to 500 guests
A 15th-century castle and family home in 1,200 Cotswold acres, with an Orangery for 150, a Coach House bar, a private library and lawns set among royal ruins.
Heritage House at Daylesford
The Cotswolds — Event Space
Up to 300 guests
Daylesford's own events building, three linked Cotswold stone and timber barns on the market garden, for dinners of up to 200.
/ About The Cotswolds▾
The Cotswolds take their character from the Jurassic limestone beneath them, a stone running from warm honey to cool grey, found in the dry stone walls, the merchants’ houses and the wool churches of the market towns. The hills rise westward from the upper Thames and crest in an escarpment above the Severn valley. Designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1966 and covering 790 square miles, the Cotswolds National Landscape is the largest in the UK. Near Oxford stands Blenheim Palace, built between 1705 and 1722 as the nation’s gift to the first Duke of Marlborough and a World Heritage Site since 1987.
The hire product is the house itself: a manor, a former rectory or a farmhouse estate let whole for a weekend, or a country-house hotel sold on exclusive use. A private house brings the caterer and staff in from outside and agrees the schedule around the household; a hotel keeps its kitchen, dining room and bedrooms. Numbers are set by the rooms and the grounds rather than a ballroom figure. A dinner stays inside, and a larger party goes into a marquee on the lawn, which puts power, access and parking into the first conversation.
Direct Great Western Railway trains run from London Paddington on the Cotswold Line to Kingham, around an hour and a half away, and on to Moreton-in-Marsh. The last train back leaves Kingham shortly before midnight, which makes a same-night return possible but tight once dinner runs late. By road the route is the M40 past Oxford. Most of the area sits beyond the practical limit for an evening that ends in London, so the occasion is usually a weekend, with guests staying in the house or nearby and a coach from a single pick-up.