The Royal Berkshire was built in 1705 as a Queen Anne mansion called The Oaks, for Lady Mary Walpole, daughter of the first prime minister, and her husband Charles Churchill, a great-nephew of the Duke of Marlborough. The Churchills kept it into the 19th century. In the 1920s it passed to Sir James Horlick of malted-milk fame, who renamed it Little Paddocks and filled it with European royalty at weekends; Princess Alexandra of Yugoslavia spent childhood summers in the grounds and later honeymooned in a cottage on the estate. It has been a hotel since 1971 and part of the Exclusive Collection since 2011.
What survives all that is a red-brick house of real symmetry and calm, standing in 15 acres of gardens at Sunninghill, minutes from Ascot racecourse and a short run from Windsor. The grounds are the quiet star of the place: lawns, mature trees, a pond that every photographer will steer you towards at golden hour, and a walled garden hidden away in the middle of it all. That is where outdoor ceremonies happen, and it still feels like a secret even with 100 people standing in it.
Indoors, the Berkshire Suite is the main event room, chandeliered and properly formal, seating 150 for dinner and holding 200 for a reception, with the library and the polo bar alongside for drinks and the smaller moments of the day. There are 66 bedrooms, so the whole wedding can stay put. The food is cooked in-house at a standard that matches the setting, there is no corkage, and exclusive use is available if you want the house entirely to yourselves.
The Berkshire Suite and the walled garden
The Berkshire Suite is a country-house ballroom rather than a barn and it behaves like one: a contained room with height and hard surfaces, which means a well-balanced band sounds terrific in it and a badly balanced one just sounds loud. It takes a five or six-piece comfortably with a dancefloor in front, and because it seats 150 and holds 200 in the evening, a bigger line-up with brass earns its place here in a way it would not in a small barn.
The walled garden is the space to think about musically for the earlier part of the day. A guitarist or a small acoustic set-up out there, with hedges and planting soaking up the sound, is one of the nicest things you can do with a summer afternoon in this part of Berkshire.
The hour after the band stops
Exclusive-use days here can run to 1am with the band finishing at midnight, which leaves a full hour of party after the live music ends — longer than most Berkshire venues allow. An hour is too much to hand to a phone and a Bluetooth speaker. A DJ booked alongside the band is the straightforward answer: booked together they hand over cleanly and nobody notices the change, while booked separately, or not at all, that last hour is where a very good night quietly stops being one. Not every date runs quite so late, so confirm what applies to yours before you build the plan around it.
Bands available in Berkshire and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
More live music in Berkshire.
- Berkshire Wedding Bands
- Events Bands in Berkshire
- Tribute Acts in Berkshire
- Berkshire Wedding DJs
- Corporate Entertainment in Berkshire
Worth reading before you book: Sound Limiters Explained. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.