Halcyon Barn
Dry hire · Wiltshire
The whole weekend, not a slot
You get it from Friday lunchtime until Sunday breakfast.
A 17th century threshing barn, twelve acres, and a farmhouse that sleeps 22, hired dry for the whole weekend. You bring the caterer, the drink and the music. We bring the building and get out of the way.
Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and one Saturday a month.
34m of oak truss, 140 down the middle
Section one · the weekend
Forty-five hours, in order.
Friday 2pm to Sunday 11am. This is the whole thing, hour by hour, with nothing quietly left off it.
Friday · 2pm
The keys, and an empty barn
Friday 2pm: the keys, the barn empty and swept, and eight hours to make it yours. Nobody stands over you with a schedule. The caretaker shows you the fuse board, the water, and the switch nobody can ever find, then leaves you to it.
Friday · 9pm
Pizza on the floor
Most couples eat pizza on the floor at nine and it is usually the best bit of the weekend. Half the table has driven three hours. Nobody is dressed. Somebody has already put the lights up twice.
Saturday · 1pm
Ceremony, inside or in the meadow
Saturday: ceremony inside or in the meadow, drinks in the yard, long tables the length of the barn, and a licence until 1am with amplified music until midnight.
The meadow — ceremony at one, if the sky allows
Saturday · 3pm
Drinks in the yard
Cobbles, a low wall everyone ends up sitting on, and twelve acres for people to wander into. If the weather turns, the barn doors are eight feet wide and the whole thing moves inside in about four minutes.
Saturday · 6pm
Long tables, the length of the barn
Fourteen trestles end to end under the trusses. Your caterer serves from the yard end and the band builds at the other, so nothing has to be shifted between courses.
Saturday · midnight
Amplified music off, licence until one
The band stops at twelve and the bar runs to one. The last hour is nearly always the quiet one — in the yard, doors open, somebody making tea for eleven people.
Sunday · 9am
Breakfast in the farmhouse
Sunday: breakfast in the farmhouse, a slow clear-up, out by eleven. We do not chase you at nine with a clipboard.
The farmhouse — nine bedrooms, twenty-two beds
Sunday · 11am
Out by eleven
Bins are ours, bottles are yours, and the field will still be there. Most people leave later than they planned and we have never once minded.
Section two · the building
Thirty-four metres of barn, and what it does in the rain.
Barn is 34m by 11m. 140 seated at long tables, 96 with a dance floor and a band, 180 standing. Fully covered, heated, and it has never once been rained off.
34 × 11
metres, wall to wall
140
seated at long tables
96
with a floor and a band
180
standing, doors open
In the rain
Nothing dramatic happens. Two sets of doors close, the heaters go on, the ceremony moves under the trusses, and the light gets better. In eleven years we have moved fourteen ceremonies indoors at short notice, and not one couple has said afterwards that it spoiled the day.
The unglamorous facts
The floor is flagstone and oak, level throughout, and it takes a heel. Heating is underfloor at the yard end and three radiant panels at the other. There is a step at the west door and a ramp beside it. The nearest neighbour is 400 metres away, which is why the licence runs to one.
Section three · the honest list
What is included, and what genuinely is not.
Included: the barn, the yard, twelve acres, 140 chairs, 14 trestle tables, the farmhouse, parking, and a caretaker on site all weekend. Not included: catering, bar, glassware, linen, and anything with a flame.
In the price
The barn, swept and empty
The yard and the twelve acres
140 chairs
14 trestle tables
The farmhouse, sleeping 22
Parking for 70 cars
A caretaker on site all weekend
Heat, power, water and the prep kitchen
Not in the price
Catering — you bring your own
A bar, and anybody to run it
Glassware, crockery and cutlery
Linen and napkins
Anything with an unenclosed flame
A marquee — you will not need one
Dry hire means dry hire. We would rather tell you in a cold February viewing than surprise you in June.
Section four · food
Six caterers we love. Or bring your own.
Six caterers we love and trust, or bring your own for a £400 kitchen fee. We do not take commission from any of them and we will say so on the viewing.
Hollow & Vine
Long-table feasting, most of it off one fire in the yard.
The Wheelwright's Kitchen
Proper British, three courses, plated, no foam.
Saltbox
Mediterranean sharing plates and genuinely very good bread.
Ferment
Entirely vegetarian, and the only one that has converted a father-in-law.
Ridgeway Wood-Fired
Pizza on the Friday, hog on the Saturday, one van for both.
Marsh & Daughter
Canapés and a wedding breakfast that actually runs to time.
Bringing your own
The £400 covers the prep kitchen, the water, the power, the waste, and a caretaker who will find them a step ladder at seven on a Saturday morning. We ask for public liability cover and a hygiene rating of four or five. That is the entire list of conditions.
Section five · beds
Twenty-two sleep here. Everybody else is fifteen minutes away.
Nine bedrooms across the farmhouse and the granary: one with a bath you can lie down in, four doubles, three twins, and a bunk room the children fight over. Twenty-two actual beds — no camp beds, no sofa arrangements, nobody counting the sofa.
The Fleece in the village holds eight rooms for us until six weeks out.
Two bed and breakfasts within a mile, both of which will do an early breakfast.
A chain hotel twenty minutes out, for the guests who specifically want one.
Taxis: book them in March, not in June. There are four firms and they all fill.
Section six · price
Price by season, and what a Friday saves you.
March to May 6,400. June to September 9,800. October to February 4,900. Friday weddings are 1,200 less and nobody has ever regretted one.
March to May
6,400
Cold mornings, long light by seven, and the meadow at its best in the second week of May.
June to September
9,800
The busy half. Saturdays in June and September go eighteen months out; August rarely does.
October to February
4,900
Candles at four in the afternoon and a barn warmer than most houses. Our own favourite.
A Friday is 1,200 less
Same barn, same forty-five hours, same Sunday breakfast — it simply starts on the Thursday afternoon instead. The guests travelling any distance were taking the Friday off anyway. Nobody has ever regretted one.
Every price is the whole weekend, Friday 2pm to Sunday 11am, VAT included. No per-head charge, no corkage, and no commission on anything you book yourselves.
We hold a date for seven days, free, while you think about it.
Section seven · six weekends
Six couples. Six very different weddings.
Same building, same forty-five hours. This is what people have actually done with it.
112 guests · June
Nadia & Tom
A ceilidh, a curry, and a barn wedding they had been told would need a marquee. It did not.
138 guests · September
Ellie & Priya
The full length of the barn at long tables. Two caterers, two families, one lunch that ran until five.
94 guests · February
Sam & Jo
Candles down the trusses from four in the afternoon, hot toddies in the yard, everyone home by ten.
126 guests · May
Rosie & Will
A meadow ceremony that moved indoors at eleven in the morning. It rained for forty minutes and the photographs are better for it.
90 guests · August
Aisha & Dan
A Friday wedding. They saved 1,200, kept the barn until Sunday, and spent Saturday in the field with the leftovers.
134 guests · October
Marta & Ines
Three courses, a brass band, and a first dance at eleven that everybody had given up waiting for.
Section eight · come and see it
Book a viewing.
Viewings take an hour. We walk the weekend in the order it happens — the barn empty on the Friday, the meadow, the yard, the long tables, the farmhouse, the Sunday kitchen — and we will tell you on the day whether your date is free. Bring the person who asks the awkward questions.
Tuesday and Thursday, 10am and 11.30am.
One Saturday a month, when the barn is empty.
viewings@thelongbarn.example — answered within a day.
Halcyon Barn, Harrowfield Drove, Wiltshire SN88 1AA.
We take one wedding a weekend and about thirty a year. If your date has gone we will say so in the first email rather than the third.