Rosewood London

Through a carriageway off High Holborn, past iron gates and a cobbled courtyard, Rosewood London occupies the building the Pearl Assurance Company put up as its head office in 1914. Rosewood opened it as a hotel in October 2013, the group's first house in Europe, after an 18-month rebuild of what had traded since 2000 as the Renaissance Chancery Court.

History

Pearl Assurance commissioned 252 High Holborn from the architect H. Percy Monckton, and the insurer stayed there for the best part of a century, running one of Britain's largest industrial life offices from behind a Portland stone front. The company moved its headquarters to Peterborough at the end of the 1980s, and the building, listed Grade II, waited for a new use. Marriott converted it and opened the Renaissance Chancery Court in 2000. Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, newly owned by Hong Kong's New World group, took over the lease and closed the hotel for a complete renovation led by the New York designer Tony Chi. It reopened as Rosewood London on 15 October 2013.

Architecture and design

The building's set piece survived every change of owner: a Pavonazzo marble staircase that climbs seven storeys inside a stone well, lit from above. Chi kept the Edwardian bones, the panelled boardroom and the vaulted basement, and layered on an interior that reads as a private London house rather than a hotel, with a lobby of dark timber, brass and deep sofas. The former Pearl boardroom on the first floor survives as a meeting room. The Grand Manor House Wing, a suite of six bedrooms behind its own front door on the courtyard, has its own postcode, a detail the hotel has made much of since opening.

Rooms and suites

There are 262 rooms and 44 suites. Ceilings are high throughout, a legacy of an office built to impress policyholders, and the bathrooms are lined in marble. The Manor House Wing suites look onto the courtyard; rooms on the upper floors face Holborn or the quieter streets behind. Several suites take their names from the building's past, the Pearl Suite among them.

Dining

Martin Brudnizki designed both of the hotel's public rooms on High Holborn. Holborn Dining Room is a British brasserie of red leather, brass and antique mirrors, with a long bar and a separate Pie Room, a counter devoted to hot-water-crust pies that became a fixture on London menus. Scarfes Bar takes its name from the cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, whose caricatures of politicians and public figures hang on its walls; there is a fire, a long run of bookshelves and live jazz most nights. The Mirror Room, off the lobby, serves afternoon tea.

Wellness

Sense, the Rosewood spa, occupies the lower ground floor with treatment rooms, a gym and relaxation areas. There is no swimming pool.

Weddings and events

The principal event space is the Grand Ballroom on the ground floor, used for weddings, dinners and launches. Smaller meetings use the former Pearl boardroom and a series of salons on the first floor. The courtyard serves for receptions and arrivals, and the Grand Manor House Wing is taken for private family weddings when the whole wing is booked together.

Location

High Holborn runs along the northern edge of legal London. Lincoln's Inn Fields and the Royal Courts of Justice are a few minutes' walk to the south, Covent Garden to the west and the British Museum to the north-west. Holborn Underground station, on the Central and Piccadilly lines, and Chancery Lane on the Central line are both close. Among luxury hotels in London it is the one that sits nearest to the City without being in it, which suits lawyers, bankers and visitors who want Bloomsbury and the West End within reach on foot.