Leighton Hall Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Leighton Hall

Leighton Hall is the sort of place a wedding photographer wants to arrive at early, because the drive does half the work. You come off the A6 near Carnforth, follow the brown signs through Yealand, and the lane drops into a bowl of parkland with the white house at the bottom and the Lake District fells stacked up behind it. The Gillow family, the Lancaster furniture makers, have lived here since 1824, and it is still their home. Suzie Reynolds started the weddings in 1988 and her daughter Lucy runs the estate now.

The house is Georgian underneath, built around 1760, and was refronted in the 1820s in the white limestone Gothic you see from the drive, with battlements, octagonal turrets and a battlemented porch. Paley and Austin added the tower in 1870, and the billiard room they built then is the Music Room now, with a Steinway in it and windows over the park. The staircase in the Hall is a cantilevered stone flight with a swept handrail, the kind you walk down in a dress. The Dining Room is panelled, with an oval skylight and Italian landscapes set into the walls. It is Grade II* listed and it is lived in, so the rooms have real furniture, real pictures and open fires in winter.

Weddings here are capped at 80 for the ceremony and the breakfast in the house, with 30 more in the evening, or 150 if you attach a marquee to the Drawing Room. Ceremonies are in the Music Room or in the Hall, or outside in the Herb Garden Pavilion in the walled garden or on the lawn, and the registrar chooses indoors or out on the morning depending on the weather. The venue books one event a weekend and the house is yours. There is no accommodation, so guests stay in Carnforth, Silverdale or Yealand, all five to ten minutes away, and the bridal car parks in front of the Hall.

For the two of us this is a house of short walks. The front lawn, the acers, the rose lawn, the walled garden and the swing are all within a few minutes of the porch, and the drive gives you the long view back at the house. Arnside and Silverdale is the area of outstanding natural beauty the estate sits in, and Leighton Moss, the RSPB reserve, is just over the hedge to the north.

Light and timing

The Gothic front faces south-east, so the white stone is lit from breakfast time to early afternoon, and that is when the house looks like the postcard. By the drinks reception the front is in soft shade, which is kind to faces for the family groups, and the park beyond is still bright. Sunset is behind the house, to the west and north-west in summer, so for the last light we go round the back, where the marquee sits and the fields fall away, rather than standing in front. The Music Room has windows onto the park and is bright enough for a ceremony without flash. The Dining Room has its oval skylight, which gives a lovely top light at lunchtime but goes dim by the speeches on a winter wedding, so we bring flash for that and for the Drawing Room dancing. Wet weather is well covered: the Hall and the staircase, the Music Room and the walled garden pavilion all work, and the Conservatory is heated.

Drone

Dom holds the CAA licence and flies the drone, and Leighton Hall is one where the permission matters more than the airspace. There is no flight restriction zone over the estate; the Heysham power station zone is about 14 km to the south and the Barrow zone about 30 km west across the bay. But the estate’s own rules say no drones without the owners’ written permission, and RSPB Leighton Moss adjoins the park to the north, where breeding birds are easily disturbed from spring to late summer. So we ask the family in writing when you book, we fly from the park side, and we stay well off the reserve. The drone shot here is the white house in its bowl with the fells behind, and it is worth asking for. Add it for £149 with photography, with a refund if the weather or the permission stops us.