ABOUT US
High Grange is an award-winning barbecue cooking school, catering business, feast venue and wellbeing retreat. We offer bbq cooking at our Fire Schools, feast nights and fire suppers in our outdoor woodland dining area, private catering for businesses and families, wedding catering, and wellbeing retreats and classes like yoga, breathwork and floristry.
We are a family-run business in the rolling hills of East Devon, run by Sara and husband Luke, a chef and wine merchant with over 20 years experience of cooking and teaching.
Luke and Sara met on an internet date in 2010 and shared a lost Sunday afternoon in a dodgy bar called B @ 1 in Clapham Junction. Then we had three children, took in a sociopathic cat and a dog of supreme dim-wittedness. We all live in rural East Devon at High Grange, not far from the stunning Jurassic coast and Lyme Regis.
Sara
Sara is very much the organisational brains behind the operation. She’s been a lawyer for 20 years – previously at Channel 4 working on programmes like 24 Hours in Police Custody and Naked Attraction - and now works freelance as a TV lawyer from home to advise on TV programmes, films, books and podcasts for broadcasters and production companies. As well as heading our back of house, and sustainability programme, she’s recently retrained as a Level 3 counselling student and also runs our wellbeing offering. She’s originally from Scotland but is a Devon hippy at heart as well as a yoga nut. Interiors, art, gardening and walking the dog make her happy with the regular sea swims the best therapy she’s ever found.
Luke
Luke is more ‘relaxed’ on the organisational front and has been a chef and food writer for 20 years. He headed up the Borough Market Demo Kitchen and taught cooking at The London Barbecue School, as well doing private catering for weddings, dinner parties and corporate events. He founded Brompton Food Market and The Hour Glass in Kensington, both of which are still going great guns. It was his idea to get the dog, and another to begin wild swimming in the Lyme Bay sea in the middle of winter.
Read More
High Grange wins best Training School at the Food Drink Devon Awards
High Grange wins a Bronze Award for best Experience at the South West Tourism Awards
High Grange is named one of the best 5 barbecue schools in the South West
The rest of the troop
Murdo is 10 and enjoys Lego and farts. Sula is 7 and likes shouting. Skye is 5 and gets no attention but seems fine and only a little psychopathic. Ruby the cat hates us. Ghillie is a Labrador and is systematically destroying our home.
After 5 years of talking about it, in September 2019 we finally sold our tiny terraced house in South West London and bought High Grange, a gorgeous house with 3 acres of woodland in the beautiful Blackdown Hills. It’s been a leap of faith to leave the familiar life we had in London for a life unknown in East Devon but we’ve been really excited to see where it’s taken us. We’ve set up our cookery school, feast venue and wellness retreat, and we can’t wait for you to join us.
To find out more, sign up to our newsletter below.