Ellenborough Park

Ellenborough Park is a Tudor manor house at the foot of Cleeve Hill, looking across to Cheltenham Racecourse. Thomas Goodman began building it in 1485, starting with the Great Hall, and the De la Bere family held it for more than two centuries. It became a hotel in 1973, closed in 2008 for a renovation of nearly three years, and reopened as Ellenborough Park in 2011 with 61 bedrooms and an estate grown to 90 acres.

The house can be taken whole. Exclusive use covers every bedroom and suite, the Restaurant, the Horse Box Brasserie, the Great Hall and Minstrel's Gallery, the private dining rooms and the grounds, with a marquee on the lawns as an option. For a wedding or a milestone party the largest room is the De La Bere Suite, with exposed brick, a private bar and a glass roof, seating 120 at dinner and holding 140 for a reception. The Victorian Old Chapel, with its gallery, seats 120 across two floors.

Smaller dinners belong in the oak-panelled rooms of the old house. The Elizabethan has a carved stone fireplace and seats 20; The Royalist, tucked into a quiet corner, takes ten. In summer the Old Chapel Pavilion, a stretch tent beside the chapel wall, holds long candlelit tables for up to 60.