Essential elements of an English wedding
Birkmere Hall comes with every essential you need for an English wedding. There’s the quirky castle ramparts of the pele towers. The marquee lawns that seem to arc for miles. The lavish bedrooms. The thunderously large reception rooms and Solar room, spread right across the first floor of the North Tower.
Need a lawn for your marquee? At Birkmere Hall, you choose your own. Above a bluff over the River Petteril, where a lazy gaze takes in the valley to the Lakeland fells, Birkmere’s formal gardens, grounds and fields are set fair for a wedding.
Say your vows on site or in a country church, dine in baronial splendour with our catering or your own choice, and let the shutter fall on happy smiles before acres of serene Lakeland. At night, make merry in the reception rooms. Ensure the drinks flow, the dancing never ends and the laughter lines run deep.
As dusk morphs into night and dawn breaks over the Eden Valley, follow the private stairwell to the master bedroom and sleep deeply in crisp sheets in an antique-oak four-poster.
The Setting
Above a bluff over the River Petteril sit the formal gardens, grounds and fields of Birkmere Hall Estate.
You can laze here for hours and admire the views across the Eden Valley and the nearby Lakeland fells. Fish for brown trout in the tributary to the River Petteril located in the neighbouring field, shoot clay pigeons nearby or just take a pre-prandial stroll. In the evening, take a walk to the Boot and Shoe pub in Greystoke and cap another great day in the Eden Valley.
The Ceremony
Options for your wedding ceremony at Birkmere Hall have timeless appeal. The traditional can pass through the stone gateway to the 13th-century sandstone church of St John the Baptist.
Beneath the cockerel weather vane and through the 600-year-old windows are woodland views and Melmerby Fell, where silence is broken only by busy chirp of swallows in summer or the call of rooks in autumn.
Want to stay on site? Birkmere is fully licensed and fully loaded for a day to remember. Want a regal coronation? Kings and queens can take over the first floor in the Solar Room or the South Tower Dining Room. For more intimate ceremonies, your vows compete with the gently crackling fires of The Snug and Oak Room.
If the sun shines down the valley, al-fresco ‘I dos’, with the fells rising in approval and the children racing over the grass, are possible from the South Tower dining room and lawn.
The Reception
Birkmere Hall comes primed for a party, with the restored castle walls ready to rock and reverberate, with a stand-up reception for 50 or up to 70 evening guests.
After the formalities, be prepared to get very informal in the dining room and other reception rooms, tuck in to our in-house catering, with no mark-up or corkage, and stay well-watered with drinks from the back kitchen.
Book our DJ, let your hair down and let the party rock and roll. In the morning, the clean air of the Cumbrian fells and a hair of the dog in the Kirkoswald pubs will clear heads faster than any Alka Selzer.
Take over the towers
Say ‘I do’ before the grandeur of the English Lakes. Take over the towers, 12 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms of Birkmere Hall, follow the rope handrail to the Solar and party right across the first floor of the North Tower. At dawn, take the private stairwell to the master bedroom and sleep deeply in an antique-oak four-poster.
