Hedsor House photographs so well that people assume it must be a film set, and in fairness it often is: Fleabag, Spooks, Quartet and Legend have all been shot here. It sits at the top of a private drive roughly a kilometre long, at the centre of 100 acres of parkland registered as Grade II for its historic interest, with the Thames valley falling away below and not a great deal else in sight.
The estate goes back a very long way. There was a holding at Hedsor in the 12th century, and in the Georgian period the house and its 85 acre estate belonged to Lord Boston, drawing visitors from Windsor including Princess Augusta and the court of George III. Sir William Chambers had a hand in the earlier building; after a fire in the 1790s it was rebuilt in an Italianate manner, and the domed, galleried central hall you walk into today came out of that reworking. It has since been a Cold War listening post and a conference centre, and is run now, for weddings, by the fourth generation of the same family.
What makes it unusual is that you get all of it. Weddings here are exclusive use: the whole house and its gardens for the duration of your stay, with 13 bedrooms and suites sleeping around 26, among them a bridal suite the house will happily tell you is one of the largest in Europe. The 12th-century church of St Nicholas stands about 300 metres away across the park if you would rather marry in a church, and the sunken garden and the lawns take care of everything from drinks to fireworks. Dining works up to about 150, with more again for the evening.
Where the band plays
The ballroom is the heart of the evening, dressed for dinner by candlelight and cleared for dancing afterwards, with the domed centre hall and the drawing room alongside so that guests can drift between dancing, drinking and talking without ever leaving the party. Rooms of this kind — hard plaster, tall ceilings, a lot of reflective surface — are lively acoustically. That suits a soul or funk band beautifully, but it rewards a band that knows to keep the low end tidy rather than simply turning everything up.
How the evening tends to run
Evenings at Hedsor generally wind down around 11pm, so the shape of the night is worth planning with a little care: eat on time, get the first dance in reasonably early, and you will have two full sets played to a room that is still packed rather than a rushed finish. The house does hold a later licence, and live music sometimes has to stop before the bar does, so it is worth confirming exactly when the band needs to play their last song at the point you sign your contract.
Arriving, loading in and getting home
The long private drive and the parking on site make load-in painless, and because the house is yours alone there is no juggling around another event. With only 26 beds available, most guests will be heading back to Marlow, Maidenhead or Beaconsfield at the end of the night, so book transport for a little after the music stops rather than on the hour. The last twenty minutes of a band’s set is a miserable thing to miss because the coach came early.
Bands available in Buckinghamshire and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
More live music in Buckinghamshire.
- Wedding Bands in Buckinghamshire
- Events Bands in Buckinghamshire
- Buckinghamshire Tribute Acts
- Buckinghamshire Wedding DJs
- Buckinghamshire Corporate Entertainment
Worth reading before you book: Sound Limiters Explained. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.