One Aldwych

Charles Mewès and Arthur Davis, fresh from the Ritz on Piccadilly, designed the building at 1 Aldwych in 1907 as the headquarters of the Morning Post newspaper, with the presses in the basement. The presses are gone and a swimming pool has taken their place. One Aldwych, London, opened in the building in 1998, and the curved corner that the architects shaped for a newspaper now shelters one of the better-placed hotel bars in the West End.

History

The Morning Post, founded in 1772, occupied the building until the Daily Telegraph absorbed it in 1937. For sixty years the block served as offices under the name Inveresk House. The hotelier Gordon Campbell Gray bought it in the 1990s and converted it, keeping the stone shell and the Grade II listed façade and inserting a contemporary hotel of 105 rooms behind it. It opened in 1998 as one of the first independent luxury hotels in London to reject period decoration, and it filled with contemporary art, several hundred pieces, from the start. The hotel closed for a few months in 2019 for a refurbishment of the rooms and public areas.

Architecture and design

The exterior is Edwardian Baroque in stone, with the sharp curved prow that the triangular site demanded and a small cupola on the corner. Inside, the Lobby Bar rises through two floors with tall windows on Aldwych and the Strand; the sculpture of a rower by André Wallace at its centre has become the hotel's signature. The rooms were designed in a clean, pale manner with large vases of flowers in place of ornament, a style that owed more to Scandinavia than to Mayfair when it opened.

Rooms and suites

The 105 rooms include 12 suites. The Dome Suite sits in the corner cupola with windows on two streets, and the larger suites on the upper floors look across the Strand towards Waterloo Bridge and the river. Rooms are quiet for their position, thanks to the building's heavy walls and secondary glazing.

Dining

Indigo, on the mezzanine over the Lobby Bar, serves British cooking on a menu that is gluten- and dairy-free throughout. The Lobby Bar covers breakfast, cocktails and a long afternoon tea service, including the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tea introduced in 2014 to coincide with the musical at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

Wellness

The pool is the hotel's one indulgence: 18 metres long, chlorine-free, lit from below, with music played underwater, in the basement where the newspaper was printed. A gym and treatment rooms sit beside it. The hotel also has a private cinema with leather armchairs, used for film dinners and for private screenings.

Weddings and events

The hotel has eight private rooms for meetings and dinners, and is licensed for civil ceremonies. Wedding receptions use the private dining rooms and the cinema for screenings of the couple's choosing; corporate groups use the same rooms for boardroom meetings and product launches, with the Lobby Bar for drinks afterwards.

Location

One Aldwych stands where Aldwych meets the Strand, facing Waterloo Bridge, with Somerset House across the road. Covent Garden Piazza and the Royal Opera House are five minutes on foot, and the Lyceum, Novello and Theatre Royal Drury Lane are closer still. The nearest Underground stations are Temple, Covent Garden and Charing Cross; Heathrow is about 45 minutes by car and St Pancras, for the Eurostar, about 15.