The Cosener's House event hire

The Cosener's House is the conference and events hotel in the grounds of the medieval abbey at Abingdon, on a Thames-side lawn a short walk from the town centre. It runs conferences, awards dinners, weddings and residential events all year - four meeting rooms, fifty bedrooms and a private bar and dining room on one compact site - and it's the setting for our favourite job on record: the graduate event for the Science and Technology Facilities Council, where the organiser went on to recommend us by name in the report written for senior managers and the following year's graduates.

The corporate side sits on the corporate event hire and employee engagement pages, the Oxford area page and the Oxfordshire area page cover the county's other bookings, and the venues page lists the rest of the named venues we work at.

The STFC graduate evening

The job was a graduate event for the STFC - the government research body - held at the house with a proper guest list and an internal report waiting at the end of it. Jamie ran the day, and Andrew McGregor, the organiser, wrote afterwards that "the level of speed, efficiency and professionalism that Jamie showed on the day was outstanding. Everyone who played thoroughly enjoyed themselves and the event ran flawlessly", before adding that Monster would be recommended in the report for senior managers and the next intake of graduates. A booking like that is the shape of the corporate work the house suits: a research organisation or department hosting its people for an evening, procurement-minded about paperwork and keen on a supplier who turns up with their own staff.

What the venue suits

The site is compact: four meeting rooms take a conference day and the bedrooms make it residential without a coach transfer; the private bar and dining room take an awards night or a Christmas dinner; and the riverside lawns take the summer side of the year, with the town's pubs and the abbey gardens a couple of minutes' walk away for guests who wander. For the entertainment layer, the indoor pieces that suit the meeting rooms and dining room are the plug-in kind: interactive darts, the retro arcade machines, table tennis and a photo booth against a wall, each running off a standard socket and coming with our own operator. An evening in the bar or out on the lawn suits the rodeo bull where there's headroom, the garden games on the grass, and the prize wheel for an awards night with prizes to give out. Which pieces fit comes down to the room and the numbers, so it's worth telling us both at enquiry.

Working at the house

Two practical notes shape a Cosener's booking. The first is parking: the venue is open about its own car park being limited and first-come, first-served, with the Abbey Close car park before the driveway as the overflow, and our own read of the guest reviews backs that up - on a busy night even the accessible bays can be gone, so it's worth putting the overflow car park in the invitation and, if you're booking us, letting us know the loading situation because the approach to the house is tight for a long van. The second is the building itself: it's a historic house with rooms of different sizes and levels, so the ceiling-height and access questions we ask on every quote matter more than usual here.

Abingdon sits about eight miles south of Oxford and seventy-odd miles from our unit in Havant, up the A34 most of the way. The town centre, with its riverside walks and pubs, is a short stroll from the front gate for guests staying the night in one of the fifty bedrooms.

The paperwork comes ready for the procurement file: we carry £10 million public liability insurance with licensed-premises cover, the risk assessment and method statement are sent with the booking, every inflatable carries a PIPA tag inspected annually by our in-house RPII inspector, the electrical kit is PAT tested, and the staff who set up and run the kit are ours, RPII-examined, first-aid trained and enhanced-DBS registered.

To book The Cosener's House or any Abingdon event, ring us on 01428 751925 or fill in the enquiry form and tell us the date, the room or lawn, the numbers and whether it's a conference day, a dinner or both.