Wedding Photographer Brocket Hall — Palladian Mansion, the River Lea and Hertfordshire Parkland
Brocket Hall is Hertfordshire’s premier Palladian country house wedding venue — a Grade I listed 1760 mansion of immense political and historical distinction whose grounds, Palladian bridge over the River Lea and 543-acre parkland make it the most comprehensively equipped great house wedding venue in the county. The house’s association with two Victorian Prime Ministers — Lord Melbourne (Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister) and Lord Palmerston (who died at the house in 1865) — gives it a political history that is uniquely concentrated even among England’s great houses. For Brocket Hall wedding photography, the Palladian south front reflected in Broadwater Lake, the bridge’s arch framing the view along the River Lea, and the sequence of state rooms on the principal floor each provide a distinct portrait environment of the highest possible architectural quality.
The Palladian Bridge, Broadwater Lake and the River Lea
The Palladian bridge at Brocket Hall — a single-arch stone bridge over the River Lea carrying the main approach drive — is the most photographically productive exterior element in the Brocket Hall landscape: the bridge’s arch above the Lea, the house’s south front reflected in Broadwater Lake beyond and the woodland on the far bank of the river provide a specific composed portrait setting of Georgian Palladian character that is the principal image associated with the venue. Broadwater Lake — the ornamental lake formed by widening the River Lea below the bridge — provides still-water reflections of the mansion’s south front in calm conditions and a sequence of waterside portrait settings along the lake’s margin. The ha-ha wall separating the formal lawn from the sloping parkland provides framing for full-length architectural portraits using the house as backdrop.
The State Rooms and the Hertfordshire Interior
Brocket Hall’s state rooms — the marble entrance hall, the Red Drawing Room, the Blue Room and the Melbourne Room (hung with portraits of Melbourne family members) — provide formal interior portrait settings of Georgian grandeur that match any comparable rooms in England’s great country houses. The marble chimney pieces, the plaster ceiling medallions, the full-length portrait paintings and the tall sash windows overlooking the park create a series of available-light portrait settings of exceptional quality for late-afternoon ceremony portraits. The Palmerston Room, where Lord Palmerston received his last guests and drafted his last Foreign Office despatches, adds a layer of Victorian political atmosphere to the interior portrait sequence.