Great Fosters is one of the grandest things in Surrey and manages, somehow, not to feel stuffy. The house was built between roughly 1550 and 1610 and extended in 1635, red brick with stone dressings and tall chimneys, and it became a hotel in 1930. It stands in 50 acres of gardens and parkland whose Grade II* registered layout was designed in 1918 by W H Romaine-Walker with G H Jenkins: yew-hedged compartments, a knot garden built around a sixteenth-century sundial, and a double lime avenue marching off to the east. Around it runs a U-shaped moat that may well be Saxon in origin, a startling thing to stroll across on the way to a drinks reception.
Being a hotel as well as a venue changes the character of the weekend. There are around 50 individually styled bedrooms between the main house, the Cloisters and the Coach House, so a large part of your guest list can stay the night and come down to breakfast, and there is a heated pool and hot tub open through the summer. The kitchen cooks for the hotel’s own restaurants as well as for weddings, which tends to show on the plate.
The set-piece is the Tithe Barn. It dates from 1390, was carefully dismantled from another Surrey site and rebuilt here in the 1930s, and it is magnificent inside: vaulted English oak, an open fireplace and a minstrels’ gallery at one end. It seats around 160 for the wedding breakfast. Ceremonies are held in the Orangery, an eighteenth-century-style room with tall arched windows onto the Magnolia Lawn, or outdoors on the licensed Archery Lawn, and drinks go to the Magnolia Lawn through the summer or to the Painted Hall Bar and the terrace beside the barn.
Where the band plays
A barn built in 1390 was not designed with a five-piece in mind, and yet it could hardly be better suited to one — the vaulted oak roof gives the sound height and depth, the timber softens it, and the room has the sort of atmosphere that makes people want to dance in it. The minstrels’ gallery is a genuine curiosity and worth a conversation with the venue, whether or not anyone ends up playing from it.
Three rooms, one party
In the evening the Tithe Barn, the Orangery and the Painted Hall Bar can be used together for up to 250 guests, and that is a different proposition from 160 at dinner. A four-piece that sounds full across the barn will feel stretched across three connected spaces, so at the top of the capacity it is worth sizing the band to the evening rather than the seating plan. Where the band sets up is then worth deciding deliberately rather than on the day, because in a layout like this it determines where the party settles.
How the evening runs
The bar is licensed to midnight, and evenings here have finished at midnight and, on some dates, at 11pm, so it is not identical every time and yours is worth confirming before the running order is fixed. Get it early and the shape of the night takes care of itself: dinner in the barn, the room turned round, and a band on stage with enough of the evening left to use properly.
Bands available in Surrey and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
More live music in Surrey.
- Surrey Wedding Bands
- Events Bands in Surrey
- Tribute Acts in Surrey
- Surrey Wedding DJs
- Corporate Entertainment in Surrey
Worth reading before you book: Sound Limiters Explained. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.