An esteemed wedding venue will be closing its onsite coffee shop and restaurant.

Bashall Barn in Bashall Eaves has become solely a wedding venue after seeing a huge influx of wedding bookings coming in up to 2023.

The upmarket wedding venue is hosting back-to-back weddings, with every week seeing at least two weddings while some weeks have up to five weddings booked back-to-back throughout 2021 and 2022.

Owner Simon Barnes has said that, despite people thinking the move may be a response to the struggles faced by the pandemic, the venue was ‘always going this way’.

He said: “It was a difficult decision but inevitable. We have been moving in this direction for years.

“I started making ginger cakes 19 years ago in an oven and I had a kettle and we turned that into a café.

“We were growing at an incredible rate.

“I am just going to concentrate every resource I have got into doing weddings.”

The venue opened just under 20 years ago and has progressed since then, with weddings becoming the dominant part of the business.

The new plans for the venue to solely run weddings was made by Simon who said that, if the capacity they were operating under did not allow them to keep on their café and restaurant staff, he would not have made that decision.

He added: “I certainly didn’t want to let them go.

“If we hadn’t had the need for these people, I wouldn’t have done what I have done.”

In response to this, Simon decided to close a shop they had on site in January and use the space to build rooms for wedding guests to book.

Planning permission has been granted for 14 rooms however Simon said that they will start with six or seven rooms and decide whether they need more rooms dependant on the demand.