Welcome to Heathy Lea
We’re Sally and James - a husband-and-wife team who feel incredibly lucky to call this special place both our home and our work.
Heathy Lea isn’t just a venue to us. It’s where we live, where we welcome guests, where weddings unfold, and where holidays begin. We live in the main house, surrounded by our holiday cottages and luxury shepherd’s huts, and from our windows we look out across the Peak District landscape that so many of our guests travel here to enjoy.
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Set on the edge of the Chatsworth Estate, Heathy Lea is perfectly placed for long walks, fresh air, and that wonderful sense of escape that the Peak District offers.
Most of the year, we host holiday guests - walkers, couples, families and their dogs - who come to explore the area and return to somewhere peaceful and comfortable at the end of the day.
We host a small number of outdoor weddings each year - just twelve - so that every couple receives our full attention, care and time. Keeping our calendar intentionally intimate allows us to truly get to know the couples we work with and to create celebrations that feel relaxed, personal and beautifully run.
We’re not a copy-and-paste venue, and we’re certainly not a factory turning out back-to-back weddings. Every wedding here feels different because every couple is different. Our focus is always on creating a laid-back, welcoming atmosphere with an exceptional guest experience. We want your friends and family to feel instantly at ease — like they’ve arrived somewhere special, but somewhere comfortable too.
Because this is our home, weddings at Heathy Lea naturally feel personal. “Your home is our home” really is how we approach it. We’re hands-on, we’re present, and we genuinely care about the people who celebrate here.
In fact, we got married at Heathy Lea ourselves. So we know exactly what it feels like to stand here surrounded by the people you love most, to soak in the views, and to wake up the next morning still wrapped up in that just-married feeling. That experience shapes everything we do.
Although we’re very much involved in the day-to-day running of Heathy Lea, we’re incredibly fortunate to be supported by a wonderful team of housekeepers and experienced wedding planners who help everything run seamlessly behind the scenes. It may feel relaxed - and it is - but it’s also thoughtfully organised and carefully managed.
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And then there’s Tilly - our Cavapoo and official welcoming committee. She can usually be found greeting guests with great enthusiasm, making friends with visiting dogs, or supervising the grounds with a wagging tail. She’s very much part of the Heathy Lea experience.
One of the things we treasure most is that relationships don’t end after a wedding or a holiday. Couples return for anniversaries, guests come back for breaks, and we’re lucky enough to see familiar faces year after year. Being part of those stories - not just for a day, but for years to come - is something we never take for granted.
Planning Your Visit?
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