January 17, 2027
A Suffolk manor built in 1820, an orangery that seats seventy, and one slow afternoon to see what a wedding looks like when nobody is in a hurry.
Reserve your afternoonWhitefield Hall · The Street, Saxtead, Woodbridge IP13 9QN, England
Whitefield Hall has stood at the end of a farm track since 1820, in a park of old limes, and it still keeps the pace of a country house: an orangery where seventy sit down at one long table, a meadow under the limes for the ceremony, and a drawing room with a log fire for the evening. There are no neighbours and no passing traffic — just the fields, the park, and a light that turns golden around five.
The open day is like the weddings we hold here: calm. Walk the park with us, sit down at the linen-laid table in the orangery, taste a menu from the farms around us, and look in on the paper workshop and on the florist who dries the flowers from our meadow.
13:00
Elderflower lemonade in the entrance hall, and the park to yourselves.
Entrance hall
13:30
Under the limes where the ceremony is held, and across the meadow that gives us the flowers for your tables.
The park
14:30
Linen, candles and plates from a pottery down the road — and four courses from the wedding menu to taste.
The orangery
15:30
Invitations on handmade paper, blind-embossed with no ink at all — and your initials pressed as a first trial.
Drawing room
16:30
Cake baked with plums from the garden, lime-blossom tea, and bouquets that will never wilt.
The terrace
Every package gives you the house and the park for the whole day, with our team, the furniture, the linen, sound and lighting. What changes is the number of guests, and how long you stay.
from £95 / guest
The ceremony under the limes and dinner at one long table, for up to seventy guests.
from £115 / guest
The orangery, the drawing room with its fire, and a marquee on the meadow — for up to a hundred and twenty guests.
on request
Supper round the fire pit on Friday, the wedding on Saturday, breakfast in the park on Sunday. The gate stays closed to everyone else.
The kitchen cooks with what grows within twenty miles, and with vegetables from our own kitchen garden. The tasting is one of our menus; yours we will put together for the season you marry in.
Two of the people who make weddings here — on the open day you will find them in the drawing room and out on the terrace.
Decoration
Invitations, menus and place cards on handmade paper, blind-embossed rather than printed, with a sheet of vellum over the top and a linen ribbon.
Floristry
Flowers from the meadow beside the house, dried all summer long: grasses, wheat, roses and gypsophila that will last long after the wedding.
Five places in the house and the park to find before tea. Collect them all — the last one is worth having.
0/5 experiences collected
Seventy at one long table in the orangery; a hundred and twenty with the marquee on the meadow. Under the limes there is room for everyone at the ceremony.
The ceremony comes inside to the orangery, whose glass doors open onto the park — the same limes, seen through the glass. The marquee has its sides ready to roll down.
Yes, and those are the ones we love best. For twenty guests we lay the table in the drawing room by the fire, and the whole house is still yours.
Eight bedrooms in the house and six in the old stables; for everyone else we book inns and B&Bs in Framlingham, ten minutes away, and our minibus runs until the small hours.
Yes — that is what the paper workshop is for. Bring an idea, leave with a trial impression, and the blind embossing is done with your initials.
Tell us the day you have in mind and we will reply the same day. Summer Saturdays are the first to go.
Ten minutes from Framlingham, forty from Ipswich, two hours from London. In Saxtead, turn down the farm track by the windmill on the green; parking is at the stables, a hundred paces from the house.
The open day is free. Leave your names and the date you are thinking of, and we will keep two places for you at the table in the orangery.
The gate opens at one. Come without hurrying, and stay until the light over the fields turns gold.
