Hoghton Tower Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Hoghton Tower

If you’re getting married at Hoghton Tower and you’re after a wedding photographer who knows how to work an old house, this is how the two of us would do it. The Tower sits on top of its own hill above the A675 at Hoghton, between Preston and Blackburn, ten minutes from the M6, M61 and M65. The house dates from about 1560 and it’s Grade I listed. The de Hoghton family have been here since the 1100s, James I stayed in 1617, and you’ve probably seen it on telly, because Peaky Blinders filmed here.

The bit that makes it special for wedding photography is the approach. The drive runs dead straight for nearly a mile up the hill from the main road, through the gate piers and into the cobbled Outer Courtyard under the turreted gatehouse. Then a flight of semicircular stone steps takes you up into the Inner Courtyard, with the Banqueting Hall, the Ballroom and the State Bedroom looking down on it. Everything you walk through on the way in is a photograph.

Ceremonies are in the Banqueting Hall for up to 120, in the Inner Courtyard outdoors, or in the Billiard Room for smaller weddings. The Banqueting Hall is lit by four thousand panes of Flemish stained glass and the top table is the house’s old Sirloin table, which is where the breakfast is too. The evening has its own space for the band or DJ, and your exclusive use runs from 1 pm until midnight. The house has three walled gardens: the Wilderness on the east side and the Rose Garden and the Rampart Garden on the south, which is where we’d take you for the portraits.

You don’t get ready at the Tower, because access starts at 1 pm. The couple get two nights in the Irishman’s Tower, a self-catering tower in the ramparts that sleeps two, so one of you can start the day there. The other half of the party will be at a hotel in Preston or Blackburn, and weddings get both of us, so Lee is with one of you and Dom with the other, and we meet at the gatehouse. Guests park on site for free with attendants pointing them in.

A Saturday wedding here is a full day with both of us, £1,295, and the full list is on our prices page. Same-Day Prints are an optional add-on from £69, and the Banqueting Hall during the coffee after the speeches is the place to hand them round.

Light and timing

Stone everywhere, and courtyards with walls on four sides, so the light at Hoghton changes with the hour. The Inner Courtyard has sun on one side and shade on the other through the afternoon; for an outdoor ceremony we’ll put you where the shade is even rather than squinting. The Banqueting Hall is lit through stained glass, which throws colour onto faces, so we set the white balance for skin and let the windows do their thing. It’s a big stone room and it goes dim by the speeches, so we bring off-camera flash on stands for the speeches and the dancing. The south-facing walled gardens are the sunny side all afternoon. The drive runs west from the house, which means the sun goes down out that way and the gatehouse front catches the last of it; we’ll nip out for ten minutes for that. It’s a hilltop, so it’s windy and a few degrees colder than Preston. If it rains, the gatehouse arch and the Banqueting Hall windows give us plenty, and wet cobbles in the Outer Courtyard photograph well.

Drone

Hoghton Tower is a Grade I house with Grade II registered gardens and a working film location, so the drone is at the house’s say-so and we ask the wedding team before we put it on your quote. The airspace itself is clear: Warton’s flight restriction zone is about 20 km west, Blackpool Airport’s about 30 km, and the old BAE runway at Samlesbury, 4.5 km north, stopped flying years ago and closed by 2015. No prison near enough to matter. If the house says yes, the drone is £149 on top of your photography and the shot is the obvious one: the straight drive from the gates to the gatehouse with the Tower on its hill and Lancashire laid out behind it. We check the airspace app on the morning. More on our drone page.