Large group accommodation in Yorkshire

Yorkshire is one of the easier places in Britain to put a big group: two national parks, a coast with proper towns on it, and a city with a racecourse in the middle, all within an hour and a half of Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle. The houses are mostly farmhouses and converted barns, stone built, with the long tables and big kitchens that came with feeding farm hands.

The Yorkshire Dales

Seventeen houses sleeping 10 to 20, from Ingleton in the west to Richmond and Gilling West in the north, with Swaledale (Gunnerside) and Wensleydale (Harmby) in between. Fourteen of the 25 Yorkshire houses have a hot tub and most of them are in the Dales. Low-season weeks run from about £1,200 for a house sleeping 12 to £5,500 for the 20-bed Moss Foot, so about £100 to £290 a head for the week, with the middle of the range around £150.

The Dales are for walking groups, for stag and hen weekends that want pubs within reach (Grassington, Hawes, Richmond, Settle), and for the big birthday where the plan is a long walk and a longer dinner. Drive times from Leeds are 25 to 75 minutes to the southern and eastern Dales; the far north around Swaledale is closer to Newcastle and Darlington than to Leeds.

The North York Moors and the coast

Eight houses sleeping 10 to 12, around Pickering, Whitby and Saltburn, and on the edge of the moors above Guisborough. This is the side of Yorkshire for a group that wants the sea: Whitby, Robin Hood’s Bay, Runswick Bay and Saltburn are all within half an hour of each other, and the North Yorkshire Moors Railway runs from Pickering to Whitby. Prices are lower than the Dales on average, with low-season weeks from about £1,060 for a house sleeping 10. Drive time from York is 50 to 85 minutes.

The Wolds and East Yorkshire

We do not have a separate page for the Wolds yet because the agencies we list have few houses of this size there; the big farmhouses around Driffield, Beverley and the chalk coast at Flamborough and Bridlington mostly let through smaller local agents. When we add an agency with stock there it will get its own page. In the meantime the eastern Moors houses near Whitby are the nearest, and York is 40 minutes from the western Wolds.

York, Harrogate and Leeds

If the group wants a city, pick a house within an hour of York and do the races, the walls and the pubs as a day out rather than paying city prices for a house that sleeps 14. Harrogate works the same way for the southern Dales. For hen and stag groups the party houses page for Yorkshire lists the houses that say yes to celebrations, with Leeds and York as the nights out.

What Yorkshire houses are like

Stone, thick walled, and older than almost anything in the south-west: expect low beams, steep stairs and a boot room. Hot tubs are more common than pools (only two houses have a pool), games rooms are in 11 of the 25, and dog friendly is rarer than you would hope, with one house in the data saying yes outright. Ground floor bedrooms exist in 13 of the Dales houses, which is a high proportion for old farmhouses and worth filtering for if grandparents are coming.

When to book

The Dales and the coast are busiest at Easter, the May bank holidays, the summer holidays and the autumn half term, when Whitby fills up for the goth weekend and Halloween. The racing calendar at York (May to October) and the Great Yorkshire Show in July also lift prices nearby. The cheap weeks are November to March outside Christmas, when a walking group of 12 can have a Dales farmhouse with a hot tub for about £100 to £130 a head for the week.

Alternatives next door

If nothing fits, the Peak District is an hour south of Leeds and has a similar stock of farmhouses; Northumberland is 90 minutes north of the Dales and much emptier; and the Lake District is an hour west of Ingleton with twice the choice at a higher price. The links below cover all three.