Birtsmorton Court is the sort of place that makes people gasp a little as they come down the drive. A Grade I listed medieval manor house at the foot of the Malvern Hills, it has a rare double moat, so you approach across water to a long, low front of stone and timber that has been growing and changing since the 13th century. The manor appears in Domesday; the Nanfan family took it on in the 1420s and remodelled it grandly in the Elizabethan period, and their heraldry is still there in the Great Hall. Cardinal Wolsey is said to have spent time here in his early years, and William Huskisson was born in the house in 1770. The best part of a thousand years of that sort of thing leaves a building with real presence.
What stops it feeling like a museum is that the family who own it live here and have been opening the house for weddings for more than twenty years. It is warm and properly decorated rather than roped off, and the grounds do an enormous amount of work: lakes, the White Garden, formal Italian-inspired planting, top and lower lawns, a wildflower meadow, and a terrace that looks straight out over the water with the hills beyond. The estate’s ancient parish church stands in the grounds for couples who want a church ceremony, and civil, humanist, Hindu and Jewish ceremonies are all held here too, indoors or out.
Weddings are exclusive use only, and more than 40 guests can stay the night across the cottages, the Georgian bridal suite and a handful of shepherd’s huts, one of them with its own hot tub. Catering runs from proper fine dining to an Airstream serving street food, with barbecues, afternoon tea and sharing boards in between, which tells you how relaxed the place is willing to be. Up to 200 can gather for a ceremony, sit down to dinner or fill the rooms in the evening.
Where the band plays
Two spaces carry the celebration. The Linney is the light-filled room couples tend to dine in, and the Party Barn is exactly what its name promises — a barn kept for the noisy end of the night, with a licensed bar and a dancefloor and no bedrooms overhead to worry about. Having the dancing in a building of its own is a genuine luxury: a band can sound-check while dinner is still going on elsewhere, and guests who want to talk can slip out to the terrace without shouting over the brass. Live music and discos are both welcome, and there’s parking on site for the load-in.
How the evening runs
The pattern at Birtsmorton is a leisurely one. Drinks spread out across the lawns and the water, dinner sits in the Linney, and then everybody moves over to the barn for the first dance. Music generally finishes around 11.30pm, which sounds early until you remember that most people have been here since mid-morning and half of them are staying the night, so the party simply carries on more quietly in the house and the huts. A band playing two sets from about half past eight fits that shape neatly; it is worth confirming the exact finish time for amplified music when you book.
Bands available in Worcestershire and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
More live music in Worcestershire.
- Worcestershire Wedding Bands
- Worcestershire Events Bands
- Tribute Acts in Worcestershire
- Wedding DJs in Worcestershire
- Corporate Entertainment in Worcestershire
Worth reading before you book: Sound Limiters Explained. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.