Peckforton Castle is the sort of arrival that does half the work for you. It was built between 1844 and 1850 for John Tollemache, then the largest landowner in Cheshire, who commissioned Anthony Salvin to give him a proper medieval castle rather than a polite gesture towards one. So there is a gatehouse, a working portcullis, a dry moat and towers of warm red sandstone rising five storeys out of the hillside. Sir George Gilbert Scott thought it the most carefully and learnedly executed Gothic mansion of its age, and it is widely described as the last fortified house ever built in England. It is Grade I listed, it stands high in the Peckforton Hills, and it looks across a wooded valley to the ruins of Beeston Castle on the opposite crag.
The castle sits in 600 acres of woodland carrying a Site of Special Scientific Interest designation, so the setting is genuinely wild rather than clipped and manicured, and the climb up through the trees is part of the theatre. Inside, the mood softens from fortress to comfortable country hotel: 48 individually designed en-suite bedrooms, a spa, a candlelit wine cellar bar tucked into the crypt, and the 1851 Restaurant, which holds three AA rosettes. Only one wedding takes place here on any given day, and couples can take the castle entirely, every bedroom and the grounds with it, if they want the hilltop to themselves.
Five rooms are licensed for the ceremony, which gives you room to manoeuvre. The Great Hall is the showpiece, with a soaring ceiling, a Minton tiled floor, a vast stone fireplace and stained glass; the Drawing Room is the largest of the function rooms, all chandeliers and tall windows; and the Hexagonal Suite, up in a tower under a vaulted ceiling with its original stonework exposed, is lovely for a wedding breakfast of up to 80. Numbers run to 165 for a ceremony or a seated meal and as many as 350 once the evening guests arrive.
Where the band plays
The Great Hall is the room you want for the evening. It often hosts the ceremony earlier in the day and then turns over to dancing, and its scale and hard surfaces — stone, tile, timber, glass — give a live band real presence. A room like this makes a horn section sound enormous and a big vocal feel effortless. It is also a lot of space to fill, so a fuller line-up usually suits it better than a trio, especially once the numbers climb towards the evening maximum and the hall is properly full.
How the evening tends to run
The natural shape here is a ceremony in one room, drinks along the Long Gallery, dinner in the Drawing Room, and then everyone through to the Great Hall for the first dance, with the Long Gallery becoming a late bar and the crypt taking the last few. That flow is a gift to a band, because it means they can load in and sound check somewhere your guests simply are not, rather than tuning up behind the speeches. Two things are worth settling when you book: the exact music finish time, which the castle does not publish, and the load-in route, since getting a drum kit up a hill and through a medieval gatehouse takes a little longer than backing a van up to a barn door.
Bands available in Cheshire and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
More live music in Cheshire.
- Wedding Bands in Cheshire
- Events Bands in Cheshire
- Cheshire Tribute Acts
- Cheshire Wedding DJs
- Cheshire Corporate Entertainment
Worth reading before you book: Sound Limiters Explained. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.