On a Saturday in October 1800, Jane Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra that she had walked from Steventon to Oakley Hall the day before. There she ate sandwiches “all over mustard”, admired Mr. Bramston’s porter and Mrs. Bramston’s transparencies, and came away with the promise of two roots of heartsease for Cassandra, one all yellow and the other all purple. Wither Bramston had completed the red brick house five years earlier. Today Oakley Hall is a family owned country house hotel on a 315 acre estate west of Basingstoke, and it holds weddings for 30 to 350 guests, in the rooms of the house and in a Garden Pavilion built beside it in 2018.
From Hall Place to Oakley Hall
Until the 18th century the house was known as Hall, or Hall Place. Robert atte Hall and John atte Hall held land here in 1299 as free tenants of the manor of Deane, and in 1620 the estate was sold to George Wither. It descended through the Withers until 1731, when it passed to Henrietta Maria Wither, the wife of Edmund Bramston of Boreham in Essex. Their son, Wither Bramston, pulled down the old house and completed the present one in 1795, after his marriage to Mary Chute of The Vyne.
Oakley Hall is listed at Grade II. It is a square mansion of three storeys in red brick, with a stucco balustrade above a bold modillion cornice, and its north entrance front ends in two semicircular bays. A remodelling in 1860 added the porte cochère over the front door, a Roman arcade in fine white stone with detached Ionic columns, and a long range of service buildings running west to a tall water tower with a pyramid roof. The stable block and courtyard of the same year, with a tower over a tall archway, and the high brick walls of the kitchen garden south west of the hall are each listed in their own right.
The house later became a boarding school, then a venue used only for weddings and conferences. A £4 million restoration in 2014 reopened it as a hotel, the Garden Pavilion followed in 2018 and the Glasshouse Restaurant was renovated in 2020.
The Austens’ neighbours
The Austens lived at the rectory in Steventon, and the Bramstons, Wither, his wife Mary and his unmarried sister Augusta, were among the families they visited. The Austens kept no carriage, and neighbours often took them to dances. On 8 January 1799 Austen went to the Kempshott ball in what she called “Mrs. Bramston’s little movable apartment”, which was “tolerably filled” by Mrs. Bramston, Mrs. H. Blackstone, her two daughters and Austen herself.
The transparencies she admired were decorations made for the panes of a window. In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price’s East room has three of them, “made in a rage for transparencies”, in the lower panes of one window, and Austen’s biographer George Holbert Tucker connected them with Mrs. Bramston’s. At the hotel, Austen’s novels stand among the books on the Library’s mahogany shelves, and two of its rooms are called the Steventon and Austens.
Vows in the Library, or under oak beams
Eight spaces at Oakley Hall are licensed for civil ceremonies and partnerships, and the house also holds Jewish ceremonies and blessings. The Woodland Pavilion is the outdoor choice: an oak frame of large arching beams overlooking the fountain and the gardens, licensed for 160 guests.
Indoors, the Garden Suite also takes 160 and opens through French doors onto the Garden Terrace. A partition divides it into the Garden Room, licensed for 84, and the Winchester, for 80, when numbers are smaller. Upstairs, the Steventon takes 100 beneath three large south facing windows over the grounds. The Library, licensed for 84, has a Georgian fireplace, chandeliers and floor to ceiling windows between its bookcases.
For a Jewish wedding, the Woodland Pavilion can hold the chuppah and the Whitchurch Suite the bedeken. That suite is the house’s dressing room, with lit vanity mirrors and space for up to ten people, hair and makeup artists and photographers included. The three bedroom Garden Cottage on the rear lawns gives the other half of the wedding party a place to get ready out of sight.
Dinner in the house or the Garden Pavilion
After the ceremony come drinks, canapés and photographs on the south facing lawns, in the topiary garden, among the sequoias or on the drive between farmed fields. In the house, the wedding breakfast works in sizes: the Library seats 40 and is kept for bespoke weddings, the Garden Room and the Winchester take 60 each, and the full Garden Suite seats 120 with its own access to the Garden Terrace.
Larger weddings move to the Garden Pavilion, a separate building of 30 metres by 15 beside the house that seats 350 for dinner. It has its own entrance, bar, kitchen, cloakroom and terrace over the gardens, a stage and a starlit ceiling. The full day packages, the Oakley Selection and the Steventon Selection, open the hotel to the wedding from 7am. The twilight package starts at 4pm, with a drink and canapés, evening food, a DJ and a Four Poster Suite for the couple, from £6,500 for 50 guests. It runs on weekdays all year and at weekends from October to March, and a ceremony can be added for a fee.
Your own caterers, your own traditions
Oakley Hall also hires its spaces dry, and has held many multicultural weddings this way, with the couple bringing their own caterers, planners and entertainment. The 2026 dry hire package starts from £7,000. It brings the Garden Pavilion and its kitchen for the chosen caterer, the Garden Suite and the Main House Bar, tables and chairs for 350, a suite for the couple and an Oakley Hall representative on the day.
A list of recommended caterers includes several for Asian weddings, and other caterers are welcome once Oakley Hall has approved them, for an extra fee. Fire ceremonies are permitted in the Garden Pavilion with a mandap in place and outdoors in the gardens, dhol drummers may start after 11am, and outdoor fireworks are allowed through the preferred suppliers. On a dry hire day the couple books the registrars, and the Pavilion must be clear by 1am.
From the Kitchen Garden
The Kitchen Garden, five minutes’ walk from the house, covers 34,000 square feet and is tended by a full time gardener. It grows greenhouse tomatoes, leeks, pumpkins, herbs, apples and tayberries. Part of its harvest goes to the Glasshouse Restaurant, which works field to fork, buys much of its produce within 50 miles and belongs to Hampshire Fare. The 1795 Bar and Lounge pours Bombay Sapphire gin, distilled nearby at Laverstoke Mill.
Fifty bedrooms and a cottage on the lawn
Oakley Hall has 50 bedrooms: 29 bedrooms and suites in the main house, 18 in the Courtyard two minutes’ walk away, and the three bedroom Garden Cottage, which sleeps six. With pull out beds it can sleep up to 116. The two Four Poster Suites are on the top floor of the main house, and the Coach House and Clock Tower Suites in the Courtyard are spread over two floors, with a lounge and double sofa bed as well as the bedroom. Some Courtyard rooms take dogs, and dogs are welcome at the wedding.
Exclusive use comes in two forms, each guaranteeing no other event that day and able to run across several days. A Key to the Manor makes the wedding the only event in the main house and gives it the Main House Bar. A Key to the Estate adds every bedroom and the Garden Cottage on a bed and breakfast basis and all the gardens and grounds; the Glasshouse closes to other bookings and opens for the group’s breakfast the next morning. Either carries a fee on top of the package price for each guest. A weekend can open with dinner in the Glasshouse and cocktails in the 1795 Bar the night before and close with brunch the morning after, both charged separately.
The hotel stands on Rectory Road in Oakley, about 10 kilometres west of Basingstoke. Basingstoke station, with trains from London, is about 15 minutes away, and Heathrow and Southampton airports are each about 45 minutes. Drivers come from junction 6 of the M3 or junction 13 of the M4, and there is parking for 200 cars. For other English country houses read our Edits on Hedsor House and Hatfield House, or browse wedding venues in Hampshire.
Choosing the house or the Pavilion
The first decision is which building the wedding belongs to. A wedding in the house moves from a ceremony in the Library or the Steventon to dinner for up to 120 in the Garden Suite. The Garden Pavilion holds nearly three times as many and is the heart of a dry hire wedding with your own caterers. Read the Oakley Hall Hotel profile and check your date.
