Wedding Photographer Ramster Hall — Edwardian Garden, the Bluebell Woodland and Surrey Hills
Ramster Hall near Chiddingfold is one of Surrey’s most celebrated private garden estates and most intimate country house wedding venues — a late Victorian country house of 1890 set in twenty acres of woodland garden in the high Weald of western Surrey, whose spring bluebell walks under the ancient oaks, the rhododendron-lined paths of May, the walled kitchen garden and the rolling Surrey Hills AONB landscape beyond the garden boundary provide a wedding portrait setting of considerable botanical wealth and quietly beautiful English garden character. For Ramster Hall wedding photography, the combination of the Victorian house’s warm brick and tile facade, the bluebell woodland’s April-May blue carpet under the oaks and the formal garden’s rose and herbaceous borders provide a portrait environment of English woodland garden drama at seasonal peaks of considerable photographic richness.
The Bluebell Woodland, the Rhododendron Walks and the Walled Garden
Ramster’s bluebell woodland — the natural bluebell carpet under the ancient oak and beech canopy of the woodland garden, at peak in late April and early May, covering the woodland floor with a continuous blue haze that extends through the garden’s three main woodland sections — provides one of Surrey’s most spectacular spring portrait settings: the combination of the bluebells’ saturated violet-blue colour, the woodland dappled light and the ancient tree canopy above create a portrait environment of English springtime woodland drama unavailable at any other season. The rhododendron walks — the woodland paths lined with mature specimen rhododendrons in white, crimson, pink and orange blooming in May — provide an additional spring portrait sequence of intense botanical colour. The formal walled kitchen garden provides enclosed garden portrait settings of traditional English productive garden character throughout the year.
The Surrey Hills, Chiddingfold and the High Weald Beyond
Ramster Hall’s location in the Surrey Hills AONB’s southern fringe above the High Weald — the high sandstone ridge between the North and South Downs — provides both the immediate portrait setting and the broader landscape context: the Surrey Hills’ rolling wooded topography of the Greensand Way, the hammer ponds of former Wealden ironworking and the ancient hollow lanes of the Weald provide a portrait landscape of considerable historic and natural depth within ten minutes of the house. Chiddingfold village — one of Surrey’s most complete and most architecturally distinguished medieval village greens, with the Crown Inn (one of England’s oldest licensed public houses, c.1285) and the medieval church of St Mary — provides a traditional English village portrait setting five minutes from the hall.