Many of England’s barn wedding venues are farm buildings, put up for cattle, hay or grain and converted long after their working life ended. The Post, at Snelsmore Common just north of Newbury in Berkshire, runs the other way. It is an English oak barn designed and built new for weddings and events, and it opened in the summer of 2021. Lara and Simon, the first couple to hold their wedding celebration there, a couple of days after their legal ceremony, later summed it up for the barn’s journal: “You feel like you’re in a beautiful barn, but not one that used to house cows!”
Because it was built for the purpose, the pieces of the day sit close together: one hall for the ceremony and dinner for up to 150, lawns for vows outside, a kitchen on site, and a four-star hotel next door where the wedding party sleeps.
An oak frame raised for the wedding day
The owners set out to build a high-specification barn of their own and kept the work local from planning to completion. ARK Architects drew the design, Archibald Shaw engineered it and Morris and Blunt built it. The frame is English oak beneath a clay-tiled roof, and the gable end facing the gardens is glazed from floor to ceiling, so the hall looks out over the gardens.
The hall has underfloor heating and an air handling system, the blinds and lighting are automated, and a real log fire burns in the bar. A mezzanine called The Rafters looks down over the hall. Underfoot is limestone, and it does two jobs: no dance floor needs hiring, and confetti stays outside, where only real petals are allowed. Decorations cannot be fixed to the oak frame or the walls, so a set of fixing points was built in instead, and every candle on the tables has to sit inside a vase, jar or hurricane lamp.
Heath, bog and old woodland
Snelsmore Common gives the barn its address. The common covers about 104 hectares and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, notified in 1989, with dry heath, wet heath, bog, birch and ancient broadleaved woodland. It is also a country park, owned by West Berkshire Council and managed by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. Beneath the bog lies a layer of peat about 5,000 years old, which researchers have studied to trace changes in land use and vegetation over thousands of years.
For photographs, the barn’s own grounds do the work: the green, the gardens and the pavilion outside, and the bar with its fireplace, The Rafters and the covered terrace when the weather turns.
Vows indoors or on the lawns
The Post holds a licence for civil ceremonies, and up to 150 guests can watch a couple marry in the hall, with more able to look on from the gallery above. Outside, ceremonies take place on the upper or lower lawn, including under the arch by the main lawn. Outdoor ceremonies depend on the weather, so the final call can wait until the couple drop their things off the day before. Pets are welcome at the ceremony and for the photographs afterwards, with notice to the team.
Legal ceremonies are conducted by the West Berkshire registrars, who must be booked at the same time as the barn; couples who prefer a celebrant book one separately. For multi-faith weddings the lawns can take a stretch marquee, and the barn can be hired on a dry hire basis with a caterer of the couple’s choosing, priced from £12,000.
Dinner under the oak
The same hall turns round for the wedding breakfast and seats up to 150, at round tables for ten or twelve or at long wooden feasting tables. Catering comes from the in-house kitchen, and outside caterers are not used apart from the wedding cake, which couples may bring in. Every couple is offered a menu tasting, and there is a children’s menu, with highchairs and booster seats.
The range runs from Champagne and canapés to street food in the garden and a formal seated feast. Outside the barn is The OutPost, an alfresco kitchen with a barbecue and a rotisserie. The Post has a vineyard of its own in California, and the team helps couples match a wine to each course. Dining packages start at £99 a head, covering a glass of sparkling wine at the drinks reception, three courses from the classic plated menu, half a bottle of wine each, a glass for the toasts and coffee.
Into the evening
In the barn’s sample timeline, evening guests arrive at 7.30pm, the cake is cut at 8pm with the first dance straight after, and evening food comes out at 9pm. The bar is cashless, so guests pay by card or the couple run a tab. It closes at 11.30pm and the music stops at midnight. There is no noise limiter; volume on the night rests with the duty manager, within the premises licence.
Two other shapes of day are offered. A Twilight wedding takes the barn from 3.30pm, with vows from 4.30pm, canapés with the drinks and a one course buffet at 8.30pm. On New Year’s Eve the licence runs on to 1am, with a glass of fizz at midnight.
Rooms, spa and golf next door
There are no bedrooms in the barn. The Post belongs to the Donnington Group and sits within the estate of Donnington & Co., the group’s four-star hotel, which traded as Donnington Valley until its relaunch in the summer of 2025. The hotel has 111 bedrooms, and wedding guests can book them at a discount; those who stay are asked to leave their cars at the hotel.
On the morning of the wedding a couple can hire the Dressing Room at the barn, or get ready in a bedroom at the hotel, where check in is from 3pm unless early access is booked. The packages the team sells for 60 guests, from the Twilight wedding to an all inclusive day, include a suite at Donnington & Co. for the wedding night.
The hotel also has a spa with an 18 metre swimming pool and a health club, and an 18 hole, par 71 golf course that needs no membership: anyone can book a tee time, and hotel residents pay a reduced green fee. For other wedding houses within reach, read about Cliveden House and Bury Court Barn, or browse wedding venues in Berkshire.
Choosing the day
The Post is at Snelsmore House, Snelsmore Common, Newbury RG14 3AL, near the M4 and about an hour from London and Heathrow. Barn hire alone in 2027 runs from £2,495 to £9,495 including VAT, with food and drink on top and a minimum spend on every booking; the 60 guest packages are priced separately. The decision that shapes everything else is the day of the week, because a Saturday between May and September costs almost four times a Monday in January, and a weekday or Twilight booking changes how the whole wedding runs.
