About Cleeve House
Located in the heart of the beautiful Wiltshire countryside, Cleeve House is an Edwardian mansion just outside the peaceful village of Seend. Steeped in history, the house is available for wedding hire, conferences and bed and breakfast.
Cleeve House Description
Wedding Hire
With Exclusive Hire you and your guests are free to wander through the historic house and gardens, which provide beautiful photo opportunities, all the while with the knowledge that Cleeve House is yours for your entire wedding day.
From accommodation to decoration, we are happy to work together with you to create your perfectly personal and beautifully memorable wedding.
With our Exclusive Hire you are free to make use of any combination of the rooms available for your very special day. The Great Hall, Salisbury Room, and Library are each ideal locations for you to create the event of your dreams.
The Library and the Great Hall are both licensed for civil ceremonies. Also, the Library is perfect for drinks receptions. The Salisbury Room is a lovely room for dining, with fine views across miles of countryside and, for the evening, the Great Hall is a wonderful grand space for dining, dancing and celebrating late into the night.
Cleeve House also has eight bedrooms to accommodate guests that have travelled far for your wedding. Please see the B& B Accommodation page for more information as well as pictures.
We are in contact with an extensive range of wedding service providers including caterers, florists, photographers, entertainers and party decorators whom we can recommend, and you are free to find and organise all the aspects of your day by yourselves as you would like if you so wish.
The flexibility of the venue means you can design your wedding to be as creative and original a day such as you have always dreamed.
Bed & Breakfast
Cleeve House has eight bedrooms each with fantastic views, four of which are currently provided with en-suite bathrooms. With high ceilings and polished pine floors, spectacular sunrises and sunsets fill the south rooms. We have single, double, twin and family rooms available, all with prepared tea and coffee making facilities. Our B& B prices all include either a full English or continental breakfast served in the Tea Room. Our friendly Cleeve House staff can be found available most times throughout the day.
Exclusive Hire
With its magnificent spaces and lasting impressions, Cleeve House is available for Exclusive Hire, giving you priority and privacy for your weddings, celebrations, conferences, retreats, media events, and many other special occasions
History
In 1857, the eminent land-owner Wadham Locke III owned a property in Seend called Rew House. After knocking it down, his son, Wadham Locke IV built Cleeve House half a mile from the original site, to be the Wadham family home. He and his five sisters made their home here, and one sister, Frances Locke, became famous for going to the Crimean War. She was the last Locke to live at Cleeve House, and when she left in 1883 the building was sold to the Bell Family.
Squire William Heward Bell, having built his fortune on the family's coal mines in Merthyr Tydfil, purchased the property for his family. He pulled down a large amount of the building and rebuilt what is now the Great Hall and adjoining entrance porch in 1884. The Hall was adorned with the many trophies of Squire Bell's hunting prowess, including a huge moose head and the skins of a tiger and a bear.
Squire Bell and his wife, Hannah Taylor Cory Bell, had four children, one of whom was the famous writer and critic Clive Bell. In 1907, the final part of the Cleeve House, including the Library and above bedrooms were built to 'make the house more comfortable' as it was the year of Clive Bell's marriage to Vanessa Stephen. Both Clive and Vanessa Bell were important members of the culturally revolutionary Bloomsbury group, in which Clives writing was influencial, and Vanessa was a prominent artist.
The young Vanessa Stephen pursued art as her profession while her sister, Virginia Woolf, chose writing. Close to her sister throughout her often troubled life, Virginia Woolf visited Vanessa Bell in Cleeve House, and wrote about the house in her famous diaries. Of the four Bell children, Colonel W Cory Bell, who was an MP and Sheriff of Wiltshire, lived at Cleeve House longest, until his death in 1961.
The Bell family crest adorns the front porch, and personal Bell inscriptions can be found among the stone and woodwork throughout the house.