Venues in The Countryside
Private seats, estates and country houses outside London, from the Cotswolds and Windsor to Bath and the South Downs, let whole with beds for the night.
Da Costa
Bath & Somerset — Italian Restaurant & Bar
Up to 200 guests
Artfarm's northern Italian restaurant at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, with Oddur Roth's artwork bar and the Oudolf Field, all bookable for a private event.
RHS Garden Wisley
Surrey — Event Space
Up to 400 guests
The RHS Glasshouse at Wisley, let privately after the garden closes from June to August, for dinner among tropical plants for 140.
Whatley Manor
The Countryside — Hotel
Up to 100 guests
A Grade II listed Cotswold manor near Malmesbury with a MICHELIN-starred dining room, 12 acres of gardens and exclusive use for up to 100 guests.
Clevedon Hall
Bath & Somerset — Country House
Up to 250 guests
A Grade II* listed Jacobethan house at Clevedon, let whole for evening celebrations, gala dinners and parties over several days, seating 150 and holding 250 for the evening.
Elmore Court
The Countryside — Country House
Up to 400 guests
A 16th-century Gloucestershire manor let whole, with a soundproofed, earth-built party hall for up to 200 where the music can run at any volume.
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.
Heckfield Place
Hampshire & the New Forest — Hotel
Up to 190 guests
A restored Georgian house on a 438-acre Hampshire estate, with kitchens fed by its own farm and garden, a subterranean screening room and a garden-floor Assembly Room for 190.
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.
Osip
Bath & Somerset — Modern British Restaurant
Up to 38 guests
Merlin Labron-Johnson's Michelin-starred farm-to-table restaurant with rooms, in a former country inn outside Bruton, with a private dining room and whole-restaurant hire.
Cowdray House
West Sussex — Country House
Up to 150 guests
A Grade II listed house on the 16,000-acre Cowdray Estate, let whole with 22 bedrooms and dinner for 150 under the vaulted roof of Buck Hall.
THE PIG near Bath
Bath & Somerset — Hotel
A Grade II-listed Georgian house in the Mendip Hills with a deer park, a walled Kitchen Garden and a chandeliered private dining room seating 22.
Gravetye Manor
West Sussex — Hotel
Up to 90 guests
A 1598 Sussex manor with William Robinson's gardens, a MICHELIN-starred dining room and panelled private rooms for up to 22, or the whole house let exclusively.
/ About The Countryside▾
The Countryside gathers the houses this directory holds outside London, filed under six destinations: The Cotswolds, Windsor & Ascot, Hampshire & the New Forest, Surrey, Bath & Somerset and West Sussex, with a house beyond all six listed here on its own. Many are family houses, still lived in and let whole rather than hotels selling a function suite, so the terms differ from the first conversation: exclusive use of the building and its grounds, a stated number of bedrooms, and a schedule agreed around the household rather than around a banqueting diary. A good number of them take perhaps a dozen events a year.
The hire product is the whole place. A country house gives a party ground that London cannot: a drive to arrive up, a hall to receive in, a dining room, a drawing room for the shift after dinner, a lawn if the numbers need a marquee, and beds for the guests who should not drive home. Capacity is usually set by the largest room or by the grounds rather than by a ballroom figure, so the seated maximum is often lower than a hotel’s while the day itself is much longer. Catering is generally brought in, which means the menu is written rather than chosen from a pack, and it means a longer lead time.
Distance is the thing to plan around. An hour and a half from central London is the practical limit for an evening that returns the same night; past it, the occasion becomes a Friday-to-Sunday and the invitation has to say so. Coaches from a single London pick-up solve most of the problem and are worth costing early, as are the local licensing hours, which are shorter than Westminster’s and enforced strictly on sound. What the country buys in return is privacy of a kind no London address can sell: no neighbours, no passing trade, and a guest list that stays together from the first drink to breakfast.