Samlesbury Hall Wedding Photographer

Why we love photographing at Samlesbury Hall

If you’ve booked Samlesbury Hall and you’re now looking for a wedding photographer, here’s how the two of us would work it. The Hall is on Preston New Road at Samlesbury, the A677, about halfway between Preston and Blackburn. It’s a proper medieval house: the Great Hall was built in 1325 for the Southworth family, the whole thing is Grade I listed, and it’s run by a charity that opens it to the public on other days. On your day the Hall and the grounds round it are yours.

The ceremony is in the Whittaker Room, which was the family’s private chapel. It’s licensed for up to 90 and the windows came from Whalley Abbey, so it’s a small, old, atmospheric room with stone mullions down one side. The Great Hall does the wedding breakfast for up to 120 and then gets turned round for the evening while you have coffee in the lounge. If you’re having a small wedding, the Parlour takes up to 25 under an oak-panelled ceiling with a Tudor fireplace.

As wedding photographers, what we like about Samlesbury Hall is that it looks like nowhere else in Lancashire. Black-and-white timber outside, dark oak inside, a courtyard with festoon lights, lawns at the front and ancient woodland along the drive. Guests park about a quarter of a mile away and walk up the drive to the door, so arrivals happen on foot under the trees and one of us can be stood at the porch catching people as they come in while the other is with you.

The morning works well here. The Gatehouse is a private suite in the grounds with a big bathroom and a dressing room, and the Hall suggests it for the bride and bridesmaids getting ready. The other half of the party will be at home or in a hotel in Preston or Blackburn, which is why weddings get both of us: Lee with one of you, Dom with the other, and we meet at the Whittaker Room. Guests stay in the 25 shepherd’s huts a short walk from the Hall, and breakfast the next morning is in the Garden Room Eatery.

A Saturday here is a full day, £1,295 with both of us (all of it is on our prices page), from the Gatehouse through to the dancing under the chandeliers. If you want Same-Day Prints they’re an optional add-on from £69, and the natural place to hand them over is the lounge, while the Great Hall is being set for the evening.

Light and timing

The Whittaker Room is lit by the windows along one side, so faces on the window side are bright and the other side falls off. We expose for you and let the glass go light. The Great Hall is tall and dark-panelled; the windows at the solar end face east, so the room is brightest in the morning and softer by the time the speeches come round. Dark oak doesn’t bounce flash, so we bring stands and off-camera flash for the speeches and the dancing rather than firing straight on. Outside, the black-and-white front is high contrast in sun, and we’ll shoot groups with the hall shading you or wait for a cloud. If it’s raining, the porch, the Whittaker Room windows and a walk under the trees on the drive with an umbrella all work, and the courtyard festoons look better wet.

Drone

Samlesbury Hall is one to ask about rather than assume. There’s no live flight restriction zone over it: Warton’s zone is about 20 km west and Blackpool Airport’s about 30 km. The old BAE Systems runway at Samlesbury is right next door, about 500 m north of the Hall, but flying there ended years ago and the runway closed by 2015, so it’s no longer a protected aerodrome. It is still a working BAE defence site, so we never fly over their fence, and we ask the Hall’s team first because it’s a Grade I listed house run by a charity. If they say yes, the drone is £149 on top of your photography and the shot is the hall and its roofline from over the front lawn, with the woodland behind. We check the airspace app on the morning in case anything has changed. More on our drone page.