Ham, near Sandwich · Kent
A place to do the deeper work, with support next door.
The Blazing Donkey is a private venue in the Kent countryside for therapists and facilitators running residential workshops. You bring the programme. We hold everything around it — including, when the work calls for it, clinical support from the clinic next door.
How it works
We are the venue, not the programme.
The work is yours and stays yours. What we provide is a contained place to do it in, an hour and a half from London, and a level of support that most retreat venues cannot offer.
You bring the work
You have a programme, a method and a group. We are not going to tell you how to run it, and we do not put our name on it.
We hold the room
The whole site is yours for the duration — rooms, grounds, kitchen, no other party in the building. Discretion is the default, not an upgrade.
The clinic is next door
PROMIS Hay Farm is our immediate neighbour. Where a group needs clinical support on hand, we can arrange it — agreed with you in advance, scaled to the work.
Why facilitators choose us
Difficult work needs somewhere that can hold it.
Intensive group work opens things up. Most venues are not equipped for what surfaces, and the facilitator ends up carrying it alone.
We sit immediately beside PROMIS Hay Farm, an established clinic. That means clinical input can be arranged around your workshop — from someone on call, through to a fuller level of support — agreed with you beforehand and matched to what you are actually running.
It is not a service we bolt on by default, and it is not us stepping into your work. It is a door that exists if you need it.
The rooms
One large room for the group. Smaller ones for everything else.
The main hall takes a full circle or a single long table under an open roof. Around it are snugs with fireplaces and doors that shut — for pairs work, one-to-ones, or someone who needs to step out for ten minutes without leaving the building.
Outside
Two acres to walk off a hard session.
A paved terrace off the main buildings and open lawn behind it, running back to mature trees. Somewhere to put people at the break that is not a corridor — which matters more after an intense morning than any amount of interior design.
No passing trade, no other guests, no one wandering through. The lane is the only way in.
Enquire
Thinking about running something here?
Tell us what you facilitate, roughly when, and how many people. We will tell you honestly whether this place can hold it.