Wedding Photographer Alrewas Hayes — Georgian Mansion, the Parkland Lake and Staffordshire
Alrewas Hayes is a grade-listed Georgian mansion and estate in the Trent valley north of Lichfield — a complete country house wedding venue whose parkland, walled garden, stable block and lake provide one of the most comprehensive private country estate settings in the West Midlands. The main house is a late-eighteenth-century mansion of considerable Georgian elegance, set at the end of a long approach drive through parkland with ancient specimen trees and a lake visible from the principal reception rooms. For Alrewas Hayes wedding photography, the venue’s combination of formal interior spaces, organised formal gardens and open parkland with the lake as a natural focal point provides a full day’s portrait agenda without leaving the estate.
The Parkland, the Lake and the Walled Garden
The parkland lake at Alrewas Hayes provides water reflection portrait settings of the kind usually available only on much larger estates: the lake surface catches the sky and the surrounding tree line in still conditions and creates a sense of scale and openness that flatters both intimate couple portraits and the wider landscape. The walled kitchen garden has been restored to productive use and provides cutting flowers, trained fruit and a high-walled formal setting in a traditional English kitchen garden character. The stable block conversion — the principal ceremony barn at the venue — retains its original brick and timber character within a contemporary event fit-out and provides interior portrait settings of warm, agricultural character that complement the formal Georgian house’s more classical aesthetic well.
Lichfield and the Staffordshire Countryside
Alrewas Hayes sits in the Trent valley between Lichfield and Burton upon Trent, in the agricultural heartland of east Staffordshire. Lichfield Cathedral — the only medieval English cathedral with three spires — is ten minutes south and provides a highly photogenic Gothic Revival setting for couples whose ceremony is in the cathedral and reception at Alrewas Hayes. Cannock Chase AONB to the west — the ancient royal hunting forest of native heathland and mixed woodland — provides open moorland portrait settings within twenty minutes. The National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas village (a 150-acre arboretum of memorial groves adjacent to the venue) provides an unusual, reflective landscape setting appropriate for couples whose families include military personnel or veterans.