In 1934 Philip Shephard gave Hedsor House to his son, also called Philip, and to his son’s bride Florence as their wedding present. More than ninety years later the house above the Thames at Taplow, in Buckinghamshire, still belongs to the family, now run by the fourth generation and hired for weddings one at a time. Their own marriages are written into the rooms a wedding party sleeps in: the couple’s suite is named after the Sri Lankan hotel where Philip and Florence spent their honeymoon, and three of the guest bedrooms recall the honeymoons of a later generation of the family.
Nine centuries above the river
There has been a house at Hedsor since the twelfth century, when the de Hedsor family lived on the land and gave the estate its name. In the 1750s Princess Augusta, mother of George III, used it as a residence next door to Cliveden. In 1764 it was bought by William, Lord Boston, and his son completed a new house, Hedsor Lodge, in 1778, taking counsel from the architect Sir William Chambers and from the King himself.
Fire badly damaged the Lodge in 1795. The house that stands today was completed in 1868 for the fourth Lord Boston to designs by James Knowles, in an Italian villa style of white brick and stone, planned around a domed hall rather than an open courtyard. Lord Boston and his wife Augusta entertained Queen Victoria and the royal family here when the court was at Windsor.
In 1925, after six generations of the Boston family, Hedsor passed to D’Arcy Baker, a racing driver and managing director of Fiat Motors, who spent heavily on remodelling it in a traditional Georgian manner, inside and out. By the end of the decade the house had gone to his creditors, and in 1932 Philip Shephard, a godson of the fourth Lord Boston, bought it with 100 acres of parkland for £12,000. Two years later it became his son’s wedding present.
Schoolchildren, the US Air Force and the National Lottery
Alexander, the only son of Philip and Florence, was born in the house in the late 1930s, and when it was requisitioned as a small school during the Second World War he was its only boy. From the 1950s to the mid 1960s the family leased the house to the United States Air Force as a top secret communications centre, which later processed information from U2 aircraft. The main gates were widened for military tanks, and they still do not meet in the middle.
International Computers Ltd followed for about thirty years, using Hedsor for training and entertaining, and for several of those years the computer that drew the National Lottery numbers stood in the courtyard. After seven years of restoration the house opened in 2007 for events and filming. A year later it played Nicole Kidman’s home in The Golden Compass, and it has since appeared in Quartet, Dustin Hoffman’s film about a retirement home for musicians, in Downton Abbey and in The Crown.
A park still being planted
The park is registered at Grade II on Historic England’s Register of Parks and Gardens, and the family is still adding to it. Some 2,500 trees have been planted across the estate in the last thirty years, among them oaks, Wellingtonias, beeches and cedars of Lebanon. Highland cattle graze the grass, and honey bees are kept on the estate.
The estate lies about 40 minutes by car from central London and less than 30 minutes from Heathrow, and Taplow station on the Elizabeth line is 3.3 miles away. More houses nearby are in our guide to wedding venues in Buckinghamshire and in The United Kingdom Wedding Atlas.
Vows under the dome
Knowles’s domed hall is still the centre of the house, and it holds both the ceremony and the evening party. Centre Hall seats 120 for a ceremony on its floor and 30 more on its mezzanine balcony, and it is one of four ground floor rooms licensed for civil ceremonies. Couples can also marry outdoors on the lawns or in the sunken garden, or choose the Boudoir, a small, light room, for a ceremony with only a handful of guests. Civil ceremonies are conducted by the Beaconsfield registrars, whose diary is worth checking before the house is booked.
For a church wedding, St Nicholas’, a small twelfth century parish church listed at Grade II, stands within Hedsor Park, five minutes’ walk from the front steps along a rural path, a walk recommended only in summer. Couples need a qualifying connection to the parish, such as six months’ residence or a baptism or confirmation there, and the reception then returns to the house.
Hedsor has also held Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and Tamil weddings, with a Baraat along the main drive and a mandap in Centre Hall, and Jewish weddings with the hora danced under the dome. Two ceremonies on the same day are usually not possible, but the house can be hired for several days.
From the Drawing Room to the Willingdon Bar
The Dustin Suite is open from the start of the day as a place for the groomsmen to get ready, while the dressing room of the couple’s suite is kept for the bridal party. After the ceremony guests move into the Drawing Room, which lies between Centre Hall and the South Lawn, and on a warm day out onto the lawn itself, which looks across the Thames Valley.
Dinner is for up to 150, and another 100 guests can join for the evening. The party starts in the Willingdon Bar, a room of botanical wallpaper and wall to wall mirrors, before the dancing moves into Centre Hall. A stretch tent over the South Terrace or on the croquet lawn adds covered space outside, but music and dancing stay indoors and traditional marquees are not allowed. Late in the night the Dustin Suite comes back into use for a nightcap with the guests who are staying.
Thirteen bedrooms, several named for family history
All thirteen bedrooms come with the hire, two guests to a room, so 26 people can sleep in the house. The couple take the Lavinia Suite, named after the Mount Lavinia Hotel where Philip and Florence honeymooned in 1934. Alexander learned to swim in its original bathtub.
The Alexander and Florence suites carry the names of mother and son, and the guest bedrooms, renovated in 2024, take theirs from family history. Skye, Capri and Mont Rochelle recall where the three Shephard brothers, Mark, Nick and Hamish, spent their honeymoons, the last in South Africa. Belles Rives is named after the hotel at Cap d’Antibes where Alexander and his wife Janey spent many of their happiest days, Hornby after the model railway in Alexander’s childhood bedroom, and Lilliput after the miniature hideaway Florence made on the estate for the Shephard boys. The morning after, breakfast is served in the Library.
For the night before, The Hive, an octagonal cottage at the start of the long drive, inspired by the hives that produce the Hedsor honey, sleeps seven in three bedrooms and is single storey, with a ramp and a wet room. The main house has a wheelchair lift to the ground floor but none above it, so guests who need step free access cannot stay overnight there.
A family house for a day and a night
Every booking has the house and gardens from 10.30am until 10am the next morning, with the bedrooms, breakfast, a Wedding Specialist and a Duty Manager. On Hedsor’s 2026 rates dry hire starts from £6,450 plus VAT, and the three packages from £18,950 plus VAT for the Darcy, for 70 or more guests; couples marrying in 2027 or later should ask for current figures.
The first decision at Hedsor is how to book it, because the choice only runs one way. A dry hire booking can move to a package later, given plenty of notice, but a package confirms its caterer, florist, production and cake at the point of booking and cannot then be changed. Couples who want to choose and brief their own suppliers should start from dry hire; those who would rather have those choices settled together should start from a package. Check your date with Hedsor House.
