West Wycombe Park

West Wycombe Park has been the home of the Dashwood family since 1698. The second Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the Society of Dilettanti and of the Hellfire Club, rebuilt his father's house after the Grand Tour as a Palladian villa with double colonnades and porticoes. No Victorian wing was ever added, and the late eleventh baronet spent decades after 1963 restoring the rooms and buying back their furniture. The house still stands much as the second baronet left it, and film crews use it for that reason: The Duchess, Belle and The Crown were all shot here.

The estate lets the house for private parties of 10 to 300 guests. The Music Room, formed around 1750 and used as the house's ballroom ever since, seats 80 under Giuseppe Borgnis's most ambitious ceiling. The South Colonnade seats 90 along one long table, and a drinks reception can run through the state rooms and out onto the colonnade. The Main Hall, decorated around 1770 in marbled Neo-classical taste, and the Yellow Saloon take receptions, while the Palmyra Room and the Blue Drawing Room suit a dinner or lunch of a smaller size.

Outside is one of the best-preserved rococo landscape gardens in England, with a lake cut in the shape of a swan and the Music Temple on its island, where 30 can dine. A larger dinner goes into a marquee beside the East Portico or down by the lake. Live music and fireworks are both permitted, and the evening ends at midnight, with an extension to 2am available. The estate supplies the house and a manager on site, and the host brings in caterers from its recommended list.