An exclusive hotel that has been owned by the same family for 40 years is expanding -- by taking over the village pub.

Hotelier Jeremy Parke, who owns Studley Priory, in Horton-cum-Studley, has bought Otmoor Lodge and the Black Olive pub/restaurant, a few yards down the road from the Elizabethan hotel.

Mr Parke was one of the first people to take advantage of the change in the law in 1994 to allow people to get married outside a church or register office. Since then there have been hundreds of weddings at the manor house.

His new venture, to be called The Lodge, will have a licence to host marriages and will also be equipped as a conference centre, with high-tech video equipment and space for 50 delegates.

A £500,000 building project has already started to transform the interior of the 18th-century pub, which Mr Parke said he hoped would remain the centre of village life.