The Best Wedding Venues in Northumberland
A considered guide to remarkable places to celebrate across the county, from castles and barns to treehouses and priories.
A considered guide to remarkable places to celebrate across the county.
Northumberland has more licensed wedding venues than most people expect, and a wider range of them than almost anywhere else in England. You can marry on a basalt crag above the North Sea, in a twelfth-century priory beside a river, in a treehouse, or in a stone barn at the end of a farm track with nothing but sky in every direction.
What follows is not a ranking. Venues suit couples, not league tables. It is a guide to the places we find ourselves driving to most often, grouped by the kind of day they produce.
The castles
Bamburgh Castle. The one everyone pictures. Nine acres of red sandstone on a volcanic outcrop, with the beach and the Farne Islands below it. Ceremonies take place in the King's Hall, the Cross Hall, the twelfth-century Keep or outdoors on the Battery Terrace, and they host one wedding a day. We have written about it at greater length in Getting Married at Bamburgh.
Langley Castle. A fourteenth-century fortified castle in the South Tyne valley near Hexham, and a hotel in its own right, which solves the accommodation question in one move. Seven-foot walls, ten acres of woodland, and a much more enclosed, candlelit feeling than the coast provides.
Chipchase Castle. Further up the North Tyne, facing south across one of the loveliest valleys in the county. Private, and considerably quieter than the better-known names.
Lindisfarne. Holy Island is unforgettable and genuinely difficult, because the causeway floods twice a day and the tide does not negotiate. If you are considering it, build the entire day backwards from the safe crossing times before you fall in love with anything else.
The barns
Doxford Barns. Grade II listed stone and oak on a 550-acre private estate near Chathill, family-run since 2015, with modern architecture added carefully. It has become the county's benchmark barn venue for good reason: rustic in feel, but polished in the way it actually runs, and set up for one-day or three-day celebrations on an exclusive-use basis.
Barn on the Bay. On Hemscott Hill Farm at Druridge Bay, with the sands a few minutes' walk away. Exposed beams, lights in the roof, a beach ceremony within reach, and resident alpacas. Warm rather than grand.
The country houses
Charlton Hall. A Grade II* listed eighteenth-century hall on a private estate near the coast, under the same ownership as Doxford Barns, and one of the most complete exclusive-use options in the county.
Ellingham Hall. Eight acres of private grounds at Chathill, built around a two-night wedding experience rather than a single day, with Lemmington Hall near Alnwick as its sister venue.
Newton Hall. Eighteenth-century, on the coast at Newton-by-the-Sea, and the choice for couples who want an outdoor ceremony with a proper indoor answer standing by — which in Northumberland is less a luxury than a design requirement.
The unusual ones
The Alnwick Garden Treehouse. The largest treehouse of its kind, with a fire in the middle of the room, branches through the floor and rope bridges to cross on the way in. Nothing else in the north of England feels like it.
Brinkburn. A twelfth-century priory in a wooded ravine on the River Coquet, with a neo-Gothic manor house, a barn and riverside grounds. They deliberately host only a small number of weddings a year, and it is the most atmospheric place on this list.
Two things worth checking before you fall in love
Licensing and capacity change. Venues extend, restrict or re-licence their spaces, and noise conditions in rural Northumberland are often stricter than couples expect. Confirm the current position with the venue itself rather than with any guide, including this one.
And check the approach. A surprising number of the best places in this county sit at the end of a single-track lane, a cattle grid or half a mile of deep gravel. It shapes how guests arrive, where coaches can turn, and which car can realistically get you to the door. Some of these venues suit the Defender far better than the E-Type, and it is much better to know that months out than on the morning.
If you are still weighing options rather than choosing between named venues, our guide to choosing a wedding venue in Northumberland works through the questions in order. And when you have a shortlist, talk to us about the driving — we know most of these approaches, and where the good photography stops are on the way.