What we need from you, what we carry, and the two things we will not host.
Insurance, licences, briefings and refusals. Most of this is dull and one part of it is a flat no that we would rather publish than deliver on the telephone.
What you need, by what you are booking.
Hiring a machine
- Hired-in plant insurance
- Required, schedule seenA specific extension. Many farm policies lack it
- Public liability
- Required, £5m minimumYours, for what you do with it
- Competence
- Asserted by you, in writingWe do not test it and we do not pretend to
- Briefing
- Mandatory on the post knockerAnd on the hedge cutter. Not optional on either
- Age
- 18 and overFor everything on Kit-Share, without exception
Holding an event
- Public liability
- Required, £5m minimumYours or your organiser’s
- Temporary event notice
- Yours to obtain10 working days minimum, £21, and people leave it to day nine
- Alcohol
- Under your licence, not oursAnd age-restricted, which we will ask about
- Caterer’s certificates
- Seen before the dayFood hygiene rating and their own liability cover
- Traffic marshals
- Required over 150 peopleTwo, and we can arrange them
An away-day or a session
- Public liability
- Ours covers what we runYours covers what your people do
- Driving licence
- Full, checked on the dayFor the driving experience only
- Alcohol
- None before or duringAnd none at lunch if you are driving anything
- Footwear
- BootsPeople have been turned away and will be again
- Under 18s
- Not on machinery, at allOn the farm walk and the shop, gladly
What we carry, and what you carry.
We carry
- Public liability cover for the activities we ourselves run
- Employer’s liability for our own people
- A written risk assessment for anything we run, shared before you come
- Briefings on everything that can hurt you, which takes longer than you want
- A named person on site for the whole of any event day
You carry
- Cover for your guests, your caterer, your band or your suppliers
- Cover for a machine you have hired once it leaves our yard
- Any licence for alcohol, music or regulated entertainment on your event
- Accommodation of any kind, anywhere on this holding
- A refund because of weather, unless we cancelled it
The two things we will not host, at any price.
-
Anything where the animals are the entertainment.
Not races, not rodeos, not a novelty involving livestock, and not a photograph opportunity that requires an animal to be somewhere it does not want to be for longer than it takes to move it.
People meet the animals here constantly, and that is a good thing, done at the animals’ pace by somebody who looks after them. The line is whether the animal is the audience’s entertainment or simply present while they are. It is a clear line in practice and we have never had to argue about where it sits.
The animals live here. Everybody else is a guest, including us on a bad day.
-
Anything that needs the estate to pretend to be something it is not.
A brand activation that requires us to imply a product is made here when it is not. A corporate day that wants a scripted appearance by somebody as though it were spontaneous. A shoot that wants the farm dressed to look like a farm that makes money.
We have said no to four of these, three of them for real money. The whole of this website is an argument that the honest version is more interesting, and it would be difficult to hold that position while renting out the dishonest one for a day.
Cancellation, both ways.
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| You cancel a machine, more than 48 hours out | Nothing charged |
| You cancel a machine, inside 48 hours | Half the day rate |
| You cancel an event, more than 90 days out | Deposit returned in full |
| You cancel an event, 30 to 90 days out | Deposit retained, balance not due |
| You cancel an event, inside 30 days | Fifty per cent of the hire |
| We cancel for weather or ground conditions | Full refund, or a date of your choosing |
| We cancel because the farm needs the machine | Full refund, and it has happened three times |
| It rains on your event | Not a cancellation. It is a farm, in England |
Alcohol is age-restricted everywhere on this estate
Please enjoy Hawkstone responsibly. Everything with alcohol in it is age-restricted: we will card you at checkout and the driver will card you again at the door. At an event under your own temporary event notice the responsibility is yours, and we will ask how you are discharging it before the day rather than on it.
What it all costs.
Every published price in this chapter, on one page, including the ones we would rather you saw before enquiring.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
Public filings, published rankings and press reporting, each labelled on the page as a verified record, a founder claim or a third-party estimate.
The words are ours. The brands are not, and nothing here is licensed.
