Port Lympne Hotel & Reserve

About the venue

Grade II listed Cape Dutch-style mansion of 1913 inside a 600-acre wildlife reserve near Hythe, Kent, run by The Aspinall Foundation and home to over 900 animals. Intimate weddings for up to 50 use the mansion and terraces; exclusive weddings for 50 to 120 use the walled-garden pergola and glass Orangery. Guests stay in the hotel, lodges or treehouses.

Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin were among the famous guests at Port Lympne when it was Sir Philip Sassoon's country estate. Two of the mansion's bedrooms are now named after them. The house was built in 1913 by Sir Herbert Baker and Philip Tilden in a Cape Dutch style. Its terraced gardens, with the Lime Tree Avenue and the Trojan Steps, look across Romney Marsh to the English Channel.

Around the house lies a 600-acre wildlife reserve run by The Aspinall Foundation, with over 900 animals from more than 75 species. It is a breeding sanctuary for rare and endangered animals. No other UK collection has bred more clouded leopards or De Brazza monkeys, and gorillas and black rhino born here have been returned to the wild. Trucks take visitors across a Kentish savannah of giraffe, zebra and wildebeest.

The Mansion Hotel has eight bedrooms and suites, and its guests can explore the reserve outside visiting hours by golf buggy. There are also safari lodges, treehouses, a treetop bubble and shepherd's huts. The Garden Room restaurant fills Sassoon's old stable yard and cooks with produce from the Port Lympne and Howletts estates.

Weddings come in three sizes: elopements, intimate weddings for up to 50 in the mansion, and exclusive weddings for 50 to 120 in the gardens. Private safaris and animal encounters can be added. For companies there are drawing rooms, a library for eight and a glass Orangery for larger groups. Dogs and other pets are not allowed in the reserve.

Grade II listed mansion built in 1913

600-acre reserve with over 900 animals

Run by The Aspinall Foundation charity

Intimate weddings for up to 50 in the mansion

Exclusive weddings for 50 to 120 in the Orangery

Elopement packages from £3,000

Hotel rooms, lodges, treehouses and glamping

Meeting rooms and team volunteering days