Middle Temple Hall

Middle Temple Hall is the Elizabethan hall of one of the four Inns of Court, built between 1562 and 1573 and in continuous use ever since. Its double hammerbeam roof is the finest in London, the walls are hung with royal portraits and armorial panels, and the carved screen at the west end has stood since the 1570s. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was performed here in 1602, and the Inn has been a home for the legal profession on this site since the 16th century. The building survived the Great Fire and both World Wars, and the grounds behind it run down towards the Embankment: cobbled, gas-lit lanes on one side, three acres of lawn and borders on the other.

The Hall itself takes 260 for dinner at long tables and 400 for a reception, and the Inn's own wedding brochure sells the evening exactly as a client would want it: a live band, a purpose-built dance floor and lighting to lift the interiors. Around it sit four further rooms of decreasing scale. Parliament Chamber, once the library, holds 100 for a reception under a moulded ceiling. The Prince's Room, named for HRH Prince William on his election as a Royal Bencher in 2009, keeps its original fireplace and oak panelling. The Queen's Room looks straight out over the gardens. The Garden Room is the newest addition, available at weekends and in the evening at certain times of year. The gardens take a marquee and 750 guests, which makes them the largest space here by some distance.

What to know before you plan the music: Middle Temple holds a premises licence covering the sale of alcohol, the playing of music and public entertainment, plus PRS and PPL licences, so amplified music and dancing are permitted indoors. They are also governed. A decibel limiter is in use and the Inn defines excessive as 85 decibels indoors and 73 outdoors; the event supervisor can require the level to come down. Events are scheduled to end at 23.00 unless additional hours are agreed in advance, with the licence running to midnight Sunday to Thursday and 1am on Friday and Saturday, and music must stop half an hour before the finish. Outdoors the rules are tighter still: no music in the garden or outside the Hall before 18.00 or after 21.30 on weekdays, and on weekends entertainment may start at 11.00 but must finish by 21.30. The in-built PA in the Hall is for speeches and background music only, so anything beyond that is brought in through the Inn's approved suppliers.