Tudor Barn Eltham wedding | Emma & Sam

Most of my wedding photography bookings come via word of mouth. Friends, family, and most often couples who were at a wedding I photographed and saw the resulting images. They see the images and will have seen how I captured them. So it was with this wedding. Emma was the best friend and bridesmaid for a bride, Hannah, at a wedding I captured in Sussex, on a very hot day in 2018. Their roles reversed for Emma's wedding in 2022.

Tudor Barn Eltham

Tudor Barn Eltham, you have to use the Eltham bit, as there are a few Tudor Barns still standing and I think it is fair to say, you don't necessarily imagine one to be in Eltham? It had been twelve years since I photographed a wedding in this part of south-east London. That had been one in winter and very heavy snow - a third of the guests didn't make it, neither did the planned old wedding car. Not an area I know well and I had no idea about this venue until Emma contacted me. But what a find.

The Tudor Barn Eltham was built in 1525 by a William Roper. He was a lawyer and MP who married the daughter of Sir Thomas More. The barn was in the grounds of his moated manor house. When Eltham was not part of London. Some of the moat still survives next to the Tudor Barn. I imagine Roper just called it 'the barn'...

So, 1525? King Henry VIII was on the throne. He was still married to Catherine of Aragon at this point - no chopping off the heads of his wives or smashing up monasteries as yet. No Church of England either. But the Tudor Barn Eltham has stood through all the history since. It was restored in the 1930s and incorporated into a surrounding public park. An art gallery was on the ground floor - now a bar. Upstairs is for the wedding ceremony, dinner, and dancing.

And so in 2022, it was where Emma and Sam got married. Ceremony in the barn, drinks on the lawn outside before back in for dinner, speeches and dancing, and some 'air guitar' from Emma, has Sam had predicted in his speech.

Here are a few images from the day at Tudor Barn Eltham...