Wedding Photographer Eckington Manor — Walled Kitchen Garden, River Avon Meadows and the Worcestershire Vale
Eckington Manor is a small and exceptionally beautiful Georgian farmhouse wedding venue in the Vale of Evesham — a seventeenth-century manor of warm Cotswold stone set above the River Avon’s water meadows near the village of Eckington in the parish between Pershore and Bredon Hill, whose walled kitchen garden, the croquet lawn, the orchard and the river-meadow setting combine to create an intimate country house experience of genuine agricultural and domestic history character. For Eckington Manor wedding photography, the manor’s walled garden — a fully productive organic kitchen garden enclosed within the original kitchen garden walls, with the espalier fruit trees against the south-facing brick, the cutting flower borders and the vegetable rows visible from the formal terrace — provides a portrait setting of English walled kitchen garden character of rare continuing cultivation.
The Georgian Manor, the Walled Garden and the Croquet Lawn
Eckington Manor’s south facade — the seventeenth-century stone building with its lime-washed elevations, the sash windows and the handmade roof tiles of Cotswold character — provides a modest but genuinely domestic portrait backdrop of English rural manor character. The walled kitchen garden’s brick walls contain a productive organic cutting garden, the espaliered pears and apples and the formal vegetable rows beyond the flower beds whose peak of colour in June through September provides maximum floral richness for summer weddings. The croquet lawn between the manor and the garden, with the manor’s facade as backdrop and the walled garden’s stone wall beyond, provides the primary outdoor portrait setting of classic English lawn formality.
The River Avon Meadows, Bredon Hill and the Vale of Evesham
Eckington Manor’s greatest portrait asset beyond the garden walls is its river meadow setting — the flat water meadows of the River Avon extending south from the village to the river’s bank, with the water meadows’ willows and the river’s reflective surface providing a specific Avon valley riverside portrait setting of considerable pastoral beauty at every season. Bredon Hill — the isolated outcrop of Cotswold limestone rising to 225 metres above the Vale of Evesham two miles north-west, topped by the Iron Age hill fort and the eighteenth-century folly tower of Parsons’ Folly — provides both a dramatic landscape backdrop visible from the manor’s grounds and an accessible elopement portrait destination. The Vale of Evesham’s fruit orchards in blossom in April and May provide a specific seasonal portrait landscape unique to this corner of Worcestershire.