Hampton Manor is the stone house that Frederick Peel, second son of the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, completed in 1855 at Hampton-in-Arden on the edge of Solihull, and a wedding here is held inside it. The couple take the Manor House for the afternoon or until midnight, and dine in the Courtyard, a glass-roofed orangery set into the house beneath a Grade II* clock tower by W. Eden Nesfield. The Hill family have been restoring the house and its 45-acre estate since 2008, and how long a couple keeps the house shapes the whole day.
Peel’s house and Nesfield’s tower
When Sir Robert Peel died in 1850, after a fall from his horse, he left Hampton to Frederick, who inherited little more than a run-down farmhouse. Frederick, a Member of Parliament, built a new house between 1852 and 1855 to designs by William Giles of Derby. Historic England lists it at Grade II as a Tudor Gothic house of stone, with battlements, large mullion and transom windows and two-storey bays; inside are an arcaded entrance hall, a fine staircase, panelling and encaustic tiled floors.
Between 1870 and 1873 Nesfield extended the house, and his clock tower of 1872 is listed at Grade II*, a grade above the house. It is an octagonal Gothic tower of ashlar in three stages, with gargoyles beneath a pyramidal slate roof and an open lantern. Three of its four clock faces sit above carved panels of the signs of the zodiac, which Nesfield’s friend the artist Albert Moore proposed, and the original clock mechanism and bell survive inside. The tower rises over the Courtyard.
The house had several later lives, among them decades as a residential home, which closed in 2007. When the Hill family bought it in 2008 it had stood empty for more than a year, with a leaking roof and an overgrown walled garden. Craftspeople restored its historic features and made furniture and tableware for the estate, and it reopened as a hotel and wedding venue in 2010. The tower has been restored too, and the walled garden is a working garden again.
Where couples marry
The Birches is the estate’s ceremony barn, a room of brick and exposed beams hung with permanent floral lights, and it holds up to 132 guests. Petals may be thrown outside it, though paper confetti is not allowed anywhere on the estate, and dogs are welcome for photographs once the vows are done. Couples can also marry outdoors on the Manor’s lawn terrace, hiring in their own chairs, or in the Courtyard. A civil ceremony takes about 30 minutes; the registrar comes from Solihull, and couples book the registrar or a celebrant themselves.
For a church wedding, St Mary and St Bartholomew stands beside the estate. Historic England lists it at Grade I: the chancel is twelfth century and the west tower fifteenth. A church service runs to about an hour, and the estate’s electric bus, which seats eight, can carry the couple between the church and the house.
How the day moves through the house
Exclusive use begins at one o’clock, and the Library bar opens from noon for guests who arrive early. In the estate’s suggested running order a civil ceremony at two is followed by drinks and photographs from half past two until four, in the Parlour, the Library bar and the Dining Room and out on the lawn terrace. The wedding breakfast in the Courtyard begins at a quarter past four and lasts two and a half to three hours, and the evening reception runs from half past seven until midnight. Two coordinators, one for the day and one for the evening, move guests from room to room; announcements fall to a friend or a hired toastmaster.
The Courtyard seats up to 160, with 130 the recommended number, and for larger summer weddings a pergola extension outside takes the seating to 200. On a wet afternoon group photographs move indoors: The Birches gives a plain backdrop, or, with a day’s notice, the staff clear the space in front of the fireplace in the Parlour or the Library. At midnight the Courtyard bar closes, and the Library bar stays open for one more hour for guests sleeping in the house.
From the last week of November to the first week of January the staircase and fireplaces are already dressed for Christmas, with a decorated tree in the Lobby and another in the Courtyard, and those decorations stay as they are. Hunt Films’ film of Emily and Zach’s Christmas wedding shows the house in that season.
Menus from the estate’s kitchen
Wedding menus are written by David Taylor, the estate’s Chef Director, who trained under Glynn Purnell, cooked in North America and Scandinavia and finished at Maaemo in Norway. He cooks at Grace & Savour, the restaurant built into the old garden walls, which won a Michelin star in the 2023 guide and serves a long tasting menu from an open kitchen. The wedding breakfast is its own seasonal menu, drawing on what the garden grows. Menus change twice a year, and after a tasting held on a Monday evening three to five months before the wedding, couples choose one starter, one main course and one pudding for every table, with a vegetarian alternative. All catering is the estate’s own.
For a different meal in the same room, Aktar Islam, chef of the two Michelin-starred Opheem, cooks spiced Asian feasts for weddings here by arrangement, served family style for sharing. His menus cater for vegan, gluten free and dairy free guests, and the Manor’s own team cooks alternative curries for other diets. The standard package includes two welcome drinks, canapés, three courses with half a bottle of wine for each guest, a toast and casual street food in the evening.
Staying in the house
The 15 bedrooms of the Manor House, the honeymoon suite among them, come with the wedding; the couple allocate them, and guests can pay the estate for their own rooms. Each is designed individually with William Morris patterns and named after one of the estate’s past owners, among them Robert Peel, Henrietta Maria, De Mountford and Rollason, the ground-floor room with disabled access. Three suites have bay windows over the gardens. Rooms are ready from three, so most guests check in during the drinks or after dinner, and the next morning the party has a room of its own for a cooked buffet breakfast, though the house opens to other guests once exclusive use ends at midnight.
A cottage of four bedrooms sleeping eight overlooks the garden and holds the estate’s dog-friendly rooms; couples who want to get ready on the estate book it, or Manor bedrooms, for the night before. Five Walled Garden Suites, built in the old timber yard and named after woodcrafts from The Whittler to The Shingler, have baths hand-cast in concrete. For a longer celebration there is a three-day wedding: dinner for 30 in the Dining Room on the night of arrival, the wedding the next day with the house kept until the following morning, and a lunch on the final day that, from Sunday to Tuesday, can take over Grace & Savour.
Reaching Hampton-in-Arden
The house is a flat seven-minute walk from Hampton-in-Arden station, which has direct trains from Birmingham in 14 minutes and from London in under two hours, and Birmingham International Airport is about three miles away, roughly ten minutes by road. Parking is free, with 61 spaces. Guide prices start at around £15,500 for 50 guests, including the Manor House bedrooms, and rise to around £29,000 with the season, the day of the week and the number of guests, and a quotation for a specific date follows a showround. More of the region is in West Midlands wedding venues and the United Kingdom Wedding Atlas.
The decision that matters most is whether to keep the Manor House after five. Without the evening extension the house and its lawn terrace return to other guests at five o’clock, the Manor rooms and the clocktower terrace are closed for photographs after six, and no more than ten children can attend. With it, the house stays with the wedding until midnight. The extension is required for more than 100 guests, and it is included on Sunday to Thursday dates and on every date in January and February. Couples who have settled that can read the Hampton Manor profile and check your date.
