Three kinds of thing.
Weddings
The pub turns down every enquiry it gets. This is where they go, and it is a barn rather than…
Residencies
A maker, a chef or a writer, a space, no fee either way, and an obligation to publish.
Away-days
Corporate days, built from a menu, including the bootcamp Kaleb vetoes more often than he runs.
The four spaces, specified.
The Big Barn
- Seated
- 120Round tables. 140 on long tables and it is tight
- Standing
- 180Which is the licence limit, not the fire limit
- Floor
- Concrete, sealedCold in February and there is no getting round it
- Heating
- None fittedHired heaters, and they cost about £400 a day in winter
- Power
- 3-phase, 32AWhich is more than most caterers need and less than a band thinks
- Available
- All yearThough nobody has enjoyed February in it
The Yard
- Standing
- 250Under a marquee or open
- Surface
- Concrete and hardcoreNot level. Bring a dance floor if you want one
- Available
- April to OctoberIt is a working yard the rest of the time
- Noise curfew
- 23:00And it is enforced, by neighbours who are right to
The Big Field
- Capacity
- 400Under canvas, and subject to a temporary event notice
- Parking
- On the headland, ~120 carsIn dry weather only. There is no hard standing
- Available
- After harvest to mid-OctoberA cropped field is not a venue
- The catch
- One wet week ends itEvery field event lives or dies on the fortnight before
The Tasting Room
- Seated
- 24The only warm room on the list
- Standing
- 35And that is genuinely full
- Available
- All yearBooked most Fridays
- Best for
- Small dinners and tastingsWhich is what it was built for
Capacities are the licensed figures, not the optimistic ones. Where a number here differs from something you have been told on the phone, this page is right.
Four things nobody tells you about a farm venue.
-
There is no kitchen.
There is a barn with three-phase power and a tap. Every caterer who has worked here has brought their own everything, and the good ones ask about drainage before they ask about anything else.
A venue that has a kitchen charges for it. A venue that does not should say so on the first page rather than the fourth.
-
The loos are hired, and they are the biggest single line after catering.
Proper trailer units for a hundred and twenty people are between eight hundred and fourteen hundred pounds depending on the season and how far they have come. That is not an add-on, it is a structural cost of holding anything on a farm, and it appears on every quotation we give.
The two things that decide a farm event are the loos and the mud. Neither is on anybody’s inspiration board.
-
The ground decides more than the diary does.
A field event booked for the second week of September is a bet on the first week of September. We have moved two events to the barn at four days notice and cancelled one outright, and every contract here has a weather clause because the alternative is an argument in the rain.
-
And it is a working farm on the day.
There will be machinery movements, there may be livestock, and there will be a smell that no amount of planning removes. People who want a farm want that. People who want a photograph of a farm are frequently surprised.
What a day actually costs, in the parts nobody quotes.
| Line | Typical | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Space hire, the Big Barn | £1,800–3,200 | Season dependent, whole day and the evening before for setup |
| Hired toilets | £800–1,400 | Trailer units for 120. Not optional and not cheap |
| Heating, October to April | £400 | Per day. The barn has none fitted |
| Power distribution | £150–350 | If you need more than the fixed sockets |
| Marquee, the yard | £2,400–4,500 | And it must come down inside 48 hours |
| Traffic marshalling | £320 | Two people, and it is a condition on anything over 150 |
| Temporary event notice | £21 | Per notice, to the licensing authority, 10 working days ahead |
| Making good | £0–900 | Usually nothing. Occasionally a gateway |
What organisers ask before they come and look.
Until eleven in the yard and until midnight inside the barn with the doors shut. The curfew is not ours — it is a condition of the temporary event notice and of living next to people who get up at half past five.
There is a list of caterers who have worked here and know where the drains are, and you are entirely free to ignore it. We take no commission from anybody on it and never have, which is why it is short and honest.
Every contract has a weather clause. Four days out we agree the plan — usually moving from the yard or the field into the barn — and the decision is ours because somebody has to make it and it cannot be made at nine on the morning.
No. Nobody stays on this holding overnight under any circumstances, which means your transport plan has to be real rather than optimistic.
Two things we will not host.
Written down, with the reasons, so nobody has to have the conversation twice.
Elsewhere on the estate.
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