Dyrham Park is the kind of surprise that Hertfordshire does rather well. Turn off the lanes near Dancers Hill, north of Barnet, and a long drive delivers you to a white Palladian mansion standing in 200 acres of parkland, with a lake, magnificent old trees and views that give no hint at all of how close the M25 and the A1 actually are. There was a manor here in Elizabethan times; the house you see is a 19th-century rebuilding, Grade II listed since 1949, with entrance gates listed a grade higher still. If the setting looks oddly familiar, that may be Elstree’s doing — the estate was a favourite location for 1960s television, and both The Saint and The Avengers filmed here.
Since 1963 it has been a golf and country club, the 18-hole course laid through the parkland and the mansion kept as the clubhouse. That combination is what makes it work for weddings: you get a private estate, immaculate lawns and mature specimen trees for photographs, along with the practical machinery of a club that feeds and waters people every day of the week. Parking is extensive and easy, which matters more than couples expect when 150 guests arrive within the same 20 minutes.
Inside, the grandest of the function rooms is the Grand Hall with its minstrels’ gallery, a room with real ceremony to it and the natural home for the main events of the day. The club holds a civil ceremony licence, so you can marry, eat and dance without anyone moving cars, and the spaces comfortably take around 140 for a seated wedding breakfast and up to 200 for an evening reception. Catering is done in house and packages are built around what you actually want rather than a fixed sheet, with outside caterers permitted where a menu calls for it — useful for couples planning a celebration with specific catering requirements.
Where the band plays
The Grand Hall is the room to plan around. A gallery and a decent ceiling height give live music somewhere to go, and a dancefloor sits naturally in front of the stage end with the bar within easy reach, so the room stays together instead of splitting into a dancing half and a talking half. For 200 in the evening, a band with a horn section or a strong front line fills the space beautifully; for a smaller, seated 140, a four or five-piece is plenty. As always with a listed house, check where the band may set up and what can be fixed to walls or ceilings — usually nothing.
How the evening runs
Drinks tend to spill out onto the lawns while the light is good, dinner runs in the Grand Hall, and the evening carries on to around midnight, which gives a band two full sets and lets the last song land while the floor is still busy. Load-in from the car park is short and level, and because the club is used to running events there is usually someone on hand who knows exactly where the power is. Worth asking at the point of booking whether live music finishes at the same hour as the bar, since the two are not always identical.
Bands available in Hertfordshire and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
More live music in Hertfordshire.
- Hertfordshire Wedding Bands
- Hertfordshire Events Bands
- Tribute Acts in Hertfordshire
- Wedding DJs in Hertfordshire
- Corporate Entertainment in Hertfordshire
Worth reading before you book: Sound Limiters Explained. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.