The outdoor ceremony at Ellenborough Park takes place at a memorial to an Indian administration. The Stone Gazebo, about 35 metres south west of the house, is an open limestone pavilion with cusped arches on all four sides and an octagonal pedestal at its centre, and it is licensed for civil ceremonies. Edward Law, Earl of Ellenborough, raised it in the middle of the nineteenth century to the officers, military and civil, who served him as Governor General of India, and their names are inscribed on its inner walls above the arches. Behind it stands the house he bought in 1833: a Cotswold manor begun around 1500, now a hotel on a 90 acre estate at the foot of Cleeve Hill, two and a half miles from the centre of Cheltenham.
The Governor General’s memorial
The directors of the East India Company appointed Ellenborough Governor General in 1842, and he went out promising to restore peace to Asia. News of the massacre at Kabul greeted his arrival. Once the Afghan campaign was over he issued a medal with the legend Pax Asiae Restituta, but war followed in Sind, conquered by Sir Charles Napier at the battles of Meeanee and Hyderabad, and then in Gwalior. In June 1844 the directors, tired of despatches they found haughty and disrespectful, used their power to recall him. At home he was created Earl of Ellenborough, and in 1846 he became First Lord of the Admiralty.
Historic England lists the memorial on his lawn at Grade II. Its inscriptions, partly eroded, name colleagues and campaigns: one reads “Napier Governor of Scinde. Meeanee. Hyderabad”, and another, on the top of the central memorial, begins “To the honour of the brave men” and records victory restored “to our arms in India”. The lists of names face inwards above the arches, headed by a dedication to the officers to whose help Ellenborough owed the success of his administration. The pedestal is carved with lotus flowers and running floral bands, matching a marble font in the Church of the Ascension at Southam. In 1987 the star pierced parapet was collapsing and the inscriptions were in poor repair; the pavilion has since been fully restored.
A Tudor house behind the earl’s towers
The towers that give Ellenborough Park the outline of a castle are the earl’s additions. The house beneath them is more than three centuries older. It was begun around 1500 by Thomas Goodman, whose initials are carved in the spandrels of the old hall doorway, and completed by Sir John Huddleston the younger, who died in 1547. The architectural historian David Verey counted it among the largest sixteenth century houses to remain in Gloucestershire, and it is listed at Grade II*.
The Great Hall stands at the centre of the west front, lit by tall stone mullioned windows with diamond leaded panes and heraldic glass. Inside are linenfold panelling, a Tudor arched stone fireplace and a ceiling of intersecting moulded beams. Next door, in the Great Parlour, a carved overmantel shows the arms of de la Bere impaling Huddleston, most likely for the marriage of Eleanor Huddleston and Kenard de la Bere around 1554. The bay window there holds Tudor glass medallions with the arms or badges of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and the Tudor rose.
The de la Bere family held Southam for well over two hundred years and received George III in 1788, during his long stay in Cheltenham to take the spa waters. The front door still carries bullet holes from the Civil War. Ellenborough extended it in Gothic and Norman revival styles, adding the towers, a stable block, a chapel and the memorial on the lawn. On the east front, a tower built like a Norman keep rises to a blind arch carrying his monogram, E.E., for Edward Ellenborough.
A school, a hotel and three years of repair
Ellenborough died at Southam House in December 1871, aged 81, and was buried in the family mausoleum at Oxenton church. The house, by then known as Southam De la Bere, became the home of Mrs Ratcliff and her daughters Lilian and Phyllis, who stayed through both world wars. In 1947 it became the Oriel High School for Girls, with 70 boarders and 30 day pupils, until the school closed in 1972. A hotel opened the following year and traded as the De La Bere Hotel until 2008, when the house closed for nearly three years. Rooms were stripped back, original features restored and the staircase taken away to be worked on, while the estate grew from ten acres to 90, running from the racecourse up to Cleeve Hill. It reopened as Ellenborough Park in 2011.
The gazebo, the chapel and the panelled rooms
The hotel is licensed for civil ceremonies indoors and outdoors, and the Stone Gazebo is its outdoor setting. Indoors, the Old Chapel is a Victorian building on the site of the estate’s original chapel, with a double height ceiling, stained glass windows and a mezzanine gallery that can hold a drinks reception, and it opens onto courtyard gardens.
Smaller weddings stay in the old house. The Elizabethan has an ornate ceiling, a stone fireplace and original panelling; the Royalist is a panelled room in a quiet corner of the house, used for intimate receptions and wedding breakfasts. For a couple marrying alone, the hotel’s Just the two of us package holds the ceremony in the Royalist or at the Stone Gazebo, with the hotel team as witnesses, followed by Taittinger and canapés on the South Lawn, a candlelit three course dinner in a private dining room and a night in a Luxury room with its own garden.
Dinner beneath the glass roof
The reception belongs to the De la Bere Court, the largest room in the main house. Original exposed brickwork rises to a glass ceiling, patio doors open onto the lawn, and the room has its own entrance, cloakroom, private bar and dance floor. Air conditioning and a sound system are built in, and the wall lighting can wash the walls in colour for the evening. When the guest list outgrows the Court, a marquee goes up on the lawns and the Court keeps its bar and dance floor for the party.
Catering is in house. Couples taste the wedding breakfast with the executive chef and choose the wines with the sommelier, and the wedding packages cover room hire and the grounds, table linen, glassware, crockery and cutlery, stationery, a Master of Ceremonies and a bedroom for the wedding night.
Taking the house for the weekend
Couples can also take the entire estate, which brings the 61 rooms with the Manor Suites and The Lodge, the restaurants, the Great Hall with its Minstrel’s Gallery, and the 90 acres and the lake, with the spa and a marquee on the lawns as options.
Bedrooms are spread around the grounds, from rooms tucked under the eaves to rooms with gardens of their own. Traditional rooms sit in the manor house, the Mews and Ellenborough Gate. Overnight guests over 16 can use the spa, with its sauna, steam room, Jacuzzi and gym, from check in at 3pm until check out at 11am, and the 16 metre heated outdoor pool is a short walk across the grounds.
Between Cleeve Hill and the racecourse
Cleeve Hill, the highest point of the Cotswolds, rises above the estate. In the other direction, under a mile away, lies Cheltenham Racecourse, the home of jump racing, whose eight race meetings include the Cheltenham Festival; a private track runs from the hotel to the course. Rooms during the races are heavily booked and have to be reserved well in advance, so the racing fixtures belong on the list before a date is held. Cheltenham Spa station is about three miles away. By road, Birmingham Airport is about an hour, Bristol an hour and a half and Heathrow two hours, and guests can also fly in, landing in the fields beside the house with a Range Rover transfer to the door, free for anyone staying the night.
For more Gloucestershire houses, read our Edits on Elmore Court, Clearwell Castle and Briery Hill House, or browse wedding venues in Gloucestershire and the United Kingdom Wedding Atlas.
A hotel wedding, or Southam to yourselves
The choice that shapes a wedding here is whether to hire the whole estate. Without it, a couple have the gazebo, the chapel and the Court inside a working hotel. With it, the Great Hall, the restaurants, every bedroom and the lawn around Ellenborough’s memorial belong to their guests alone for the weekend. Read the Ellenborough Park profile and check your date.
