The Hospital Club, Covent Garden - hotel review

This smart and retro-chic stay is redefining inner city boltholes for well-heeled media types with a handsome budget to blow, says Liz Connor
The Suite at The Hospital Club in Covent Garden
Liz Connor12 August 2016

Achingly cool interiors and impeccable service positions the Hospital Club as a major contender for London's hippest hotel.

Where is it? Right in the thick of London’s West End and a stone’s throw from the hustle and bustle of Covent Garden. The private member’s club has been around for years: it was built on the site of the former St Paul’s hospital in 2003. However, over the past 12 months, it has extended its offering to include an array of chic boutique bedrooms for clients and guests with an eye for design. The theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue are well within spitting distance and Soho’s colourful nightlife is a short stumble home.

The club has been designed by Russell Sage Studio

Style: If Roger Sterling and Don Draper wanted a taste of Madison Ave in central London, they would probably head here. These days, however, you’re more likely to spot a Grimshaw or a Gandy ascending in its stainless steel lifts. The Mad Men-vibing interiors by design powerhouse Russell Sage aren’t overwhelmingly masculine but just enough to make you want to sink an Old Fashioned on entry: think crushed velvet semi-circular sofas in burnt orange, trendy teak side tables and retro low-hanging lights.

The Seventies interiors are nicely offset by contemporary design details: bespoke Missoni-style textiles, industrial tripod lamps and and a stunning timber canopy that runs above the bed. Contemporary artwork is central to the hotel and every six months the Hospital Club commissions artists like Jacob Love and Alyson Mowat to curate and exhibit their work within each of the bedrooms, giving each space a unique identity and a talking point for design-lovers. We stayed in a room that had been kitted out with Julian Wild’s colourful ‘Toad in the Hole’ sculptures - witty, orange torus’ scattered across the suite’s walls. Elsewhere, look out for Solomon and Wu’s architectural surfaces lining the corridors.

The Suite has its own beautifully appointed living space

Facilities: It might look compact from outside but The Hospital Club is a treasure trove of slick bars, cosy cocktail lounges, restaurants and meeting rooms set across seven floors. You don’t have to be a member of this private club to book a room and doing so will give you full access to its many facilities. You might even stumble across the state of the art recording and TV studio hidden in the basement. Business aside, head to the fourth floor Martini Bar for the best cocktails in Covent Garden, or steal away to the Oak Room and its discreet terrace to catch artists like Peace, Nick Mulvey and Twin Atlantic take to the mic.

A lazy Sunday morning should be spent checking out the Hospital Club’s in-house gallery, which curates and hosts four public exhibitions of contemporary artists every year. In September, the club will host an exhibition by Ivan Moscovich, the world-renowned inventor, author, artist and Holocaust survivor.

Many of the rooms boast their own private terrace

Extra-curricular: Tourists who head here are basically in heaven - there’s Oxford Circus to the left, The British Museum to the north, Covent Garden to the south and theatres in every direction. Staycationers who already know the drill should try some of the lesser-known delights of the area. There’s Sir John Soane’s Museum, which holds the drawings, antiques and models of the neo-classical architect, and the Hunterian Museum which tells the grisly history of surgery and medicine.

Foodies should make a pitstop at J Sheekey’s Atlantic Bar for lunchtime oysters on tap or Balthazar for a spot of Manhattan-style brunch. If all else fails, you could head for a spot of boutique shopping at Rokit, Opening Ceremony and Y-3.

Design details at The Hospital Club

Food and drink: One of the jewels of this in the know stay is its in-house restaurant. This upmarket modern British restaurant is all soft leather booths and crisp white linen table cloths: the perfect place to wine and dine a client or a date. While the menu is vast and varied, make the most of the restaurant’s selection of very British dishes such as the roast pork fillet with braised potato, lovage, hazelnut pesto and pork jus or the delicious lamb shank with baby turnips, spring peas and consomme.

The service here is impeccable and the wine and cocktail list is extensive, so make the most of it. Elsewhere there are a number of hidden bars, lounges and terraces in which to enjoy a digestif or a cigar. But if you aren’t in the mood to rub shoulders with the other fashionable patrons, wait for the turndown cocktail service to pitch up at your door at 6pm and deliver a trolley boozy beverages to your suite.

The best London hotels for a city break

1/10

Which room? The smaller rooms have everything you need for a luxury overnight crash pad. However, the Suite is the only place to book if you want to make the most of a weekend here. The king-sized bedroom leads through to a beautifully appointed living space and looks onto it’s own private balcony. It has all the mod-cons you’d expect from a crash pad for jetsetting media moguls: Libratone speakers, humongous 4K TV screens, Robert’s radios and a Nespresso machine (which will be your saviour the morning after a visit from the lethal cocktail trolley).

Magpies will feel right at home perusing the stylishly curated bric-a-brac adorning the shelves from books and timepieces, to ceramic Staffordshire Terriers, while the bathroom boasts a rather incredible freestanding bath, as well as a separate rainforest shower packed with Ren toiletries.

Each room has its own freestanding bath and rainforest shower

Best for: Creatives with cash to splash. The rooms don’t come cheap but are well worth the hype.

When to go? ...how soon can you take a staycation?

Price: Prices start from £170 per night for a small room.

Details: 24 Endell St, London WC2H 9HQ. 020 7170 9100. thehospitalclub.com

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