Priston Mill sits about 7 miles west of Bath, on Duchy of Cornwall land, at the end of lanes that give away nothing about what is waiting at the bottom of them. The site is genuinely ancient: it was handed to the monks of Bath Abbey by King Athelstan in the 10th century, and there has been a mill turning here more or less ever since. What greets you now is a huddle of honey-coloured stone buildings around a courtyard, a brook running through the gardens, and a view over the Somerset countryside that carries on until the light gives out.
The Tythe Barn is the grander of the rooms that take weddings. It dates from the 1720s, and the first thing everybody does on walking in is look up — the oak rafters are enormous and the vaulted roof climbs 15 metres above the floor. It seats up to 130 for a ceremony and the wedding breakfast, a few more if you use the mezzanine, and absorbs the evening crowd afterwards without feeling crowded. Alongside it, the Parlour is low-beamed and strung with hundreds of fairy lights, which makes it the natural home for drinks and coffee, and the bar is a proper one, with local beer and cider on it.
The Watermill is an altogether different proposition. The waterwheel still turns, the gears and cogs still grind round, and glass panels let you look down on the great iron wheel at work while you stand above it with a drink in your hand. Outside there is a pagoda for open-air vows, a pergola built around a millstone water feature, and lawns that make a drinks reception easy to run. Food is done in-house, the Hayloft opens at 8am so the wedding party can get ready slowly over a breakfast hamper, and from 2026 the restored Farmhouse offers 6 en-suite double bedrooms for the people you most want still to be there at the end.
Where the band sets up
The rooms ask for slightly different things. The Tythe Barn is the more forgiving of the pair: all that height and timber gives the sound somewhere to go, and a bigger line-up with horns can play out properly without having to lean on the volume. The Watermill has a smaller footprint and a great deal of hard stone, which tends to suit a tighter act — or an acoustic duo through the afternoon with something fuller taking over after dinner. It is the first thing worth telling us, because the room really does change the recommendation.
How the evening runs
Evenings here usually run to midnight, which is a generous amount of night: enough for a full set either side of a break, and for the last song to land while the floor is still crowded rather than politely emptying. One thing worth confirming when you book is whether live music is expected to stop a little before the venue itself does — a gap of half an hour between the band packing down and the lights coming up is easy to overlook on paper and very obvious on the night, and it is easily filled once you know it is there. With bedrooms in the Farmhouse from 2026, fewer people will be watching for a taxi, and that tells in the final half hour more than anything else.
Bands available in Somerset and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
More live music in Somerset.
- Somerset Wedding Bands
- Events Bands in Somerset
- Tribute Acts in Somerset
- Somerset Wedding DJs
- Corporate Entertainment in Somerset
Worth reading before you book: Sound Limiters Explained. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.