Seminars and company events
The Oakeley Arms Hotel caters for corporate meetings, training events, weddings and private celebrations for groups of up to 150 people. It stands in the village of Maentwrog, in the Vale of Ffestiniog, within Snowdonia in North Wales, and has received travelers in one form or another since the sixteenth century.
For companies, the hotel offers its function room for meetings and training days, with food served on site and bedrooms upstairs for teams that stay overnight. The setting works for an away day that mixes a morning session with an afternoon outdoors: Zip World, the Llechwedd Slate Caverns, the Ffestiniog Railway and Portmeirion are all a short drive away. Coaches and minibuses can park on site with advance notice, and the hotel also serves coach parties as a lunch stop.
Weddings and receptions
Weddings and receptions are a main part of the business. The team helps plan the reception and offers banqueting tailored to each couple, and exclusive use of the hotel can be arranged so that the wedding party has the place to itself. Five acres of gardens give space for drinks and photographs. The hotel also hosts birthday parties, christening parties and funeral luncheons.
Rooms and capacities
The function room can be booked for private use, and the hotel caters for groups of up to 150 people. The gardens cover five acres. The hotel does not publish layouts or separate figures for seated and standing events, so the format should be discussed with the team.
Accommodation
The hotel has single, double, twin and family en-suite rooms, the family rooms sleeping four, in a traditional stone building. Self-catering holiday cottages on the estate add space for larger wedding parties or for teams that prefer to stay together.
Catering
Catering is in-house. The restaurant serves home-cooked meals made with local produce, with vegetarian, vegan and children's options, and breakfast is a full Welsh. The bar is a free house with real ales, ciders and a range of Welsh gins, whiskies and wines.
History and setting
The inn dates back to the 1500s, with parts of the building from the 1600s, and was first known as the Tan y Bwlch Inn. The present building took shape in the eighteenth century, when it also served as a meeting place for local businessmen and as a makeshift courthouse and police station. It took the name Oakeley Arms in the early 1840s, after the Oakeley family of Tan y Bwlch, whose mansion stands a few yards to the west. The hotel was sold off from the estate in 1910 with 1,000 acres of land, was listed Grade II in 1954, and was restored by its current owners after 2003.
Getting there
The address is Tan Y Bwlch, Maentwrog, Gwynedd LL41 3YU. The hotel is best reached by car or coach, and the narrow-gauge Ffestiniog Railway runs nearby.
