About

Until the age of 21 I show-jumped horses professionally from our yard in Essex (Finchingfield) where I lived with my sister and parents. I knew nothing else but the horses and had hardly attended school. In 2001, I was invited to train with the Barker family here in Yorkshire for a few weeks, to ride, learn and train with Paul Barker an extremely successful show jumping rider. I also came to learn from this famous Show Jumping family in the winter using their indoor school and also to get my HGV licence. The short story is I never went home, I gave up the horses, sending them back to Essex and married the farmer of the family, Phillip in June 2006 in a marquee wedding on his parent’s farm.

I soon missed the adrenaline of the show jumping and needed something to get my teeth into and we put in planning permission to renovate Phillip’s farm buildings. When this was turned down for the residential use, as we had wanted to live in them I was devastated, we could only build the holiday cottages at the time and all we wanted was to live there (here). But now looking back it was the best thing that could have happened.

Funny how life takes us on these journeys.

During the first building project we also had Clara and so it was a crazy time for us, building four cottages and having a little girl in 2007. By the time we were ready to open I was pregnant with James and we were moving house too. We opened Thief Hall in July 2009 and I now had enough to keep me out of trouble with Clara, James and a business to run not to mention Phillip was still farming and I was supporting him with his paperwork.

Life evolved with the cottages, family and extra jobs, such as becoming the Recruitment Director for Premier Cottages, which meant I had to give up the show jumping for my new love of business. But at least my adrenaline itch was well and truly being looked after! I learned so much with Premier Cottages, it was the best thing that I could have done for Thief Hall as a business.

In October 2015 we had renovated the remaining farm buildings and Thief Hall was grown from the four cottages to six with Hall giving us the opportunity to offer couples the chance to get married on site. We love what we do here and have a strong family team working closely to bring you everything we can to make your stay as comfortable as possible.

If you live in the surrounding areas of Darlington, Harrogate, Ripon, Thirsk,
York or anywhere in North Yorkshire then Thief Hall is a beautiful wedding venue in a rural location and beautiful views.