The Rookery
Hip eateries and bars have supplanted hovels and bawdy houses in this once-notorious area, but behind the 18th-century facade of three shop-houses Georgian London lives on. More
Good Hotel Guide Review
Hip eateries and bars have supplanted hovels and bawdy houses in this once-notorious area, but behind the 18th-century facade of three shop-houses Georgian London lives on. Peter McKay and Douglas Blain had the property gutted and refitted, with salvaged mahogany panelling and old stair treads for an authentic creak, then filled the interiors with antiques, books, portraits, artefacts. Expect to find Bagheera the cat snoozing by a fire in one of the cosy parlours. Bedrooms have names, not numbers. Ground-floor Dr Theophilus Garencières has a carved oak four-poster, a separate sitting area. The emerald-green Rook’s Nest has a hand-painted four-poster, an old-fangled bathing contraption on a plinth, stairs to a sitting room with a lawyer’s writing desk. All rooms have vintage bathroom fittings, a freestanding bath or powerful shower, air conditioning, a minibar and TV (here, as at London sister hotels Hazlitt’s and Batty Langley’s, verisimilitude has its limits). You can order from a room-service menu, maybe a charcuterie plate, chicken pie or lobster ravioli, and take the sun in a leafy patio garden among stone urns and cherubs.
Hotel details
Address
12 Peter's Lane
Cowcross Street
London
Middlesex
EC1M 6DS
England
Telephone
020 7336 0931
Bedrooms
33. 1 on ground floor.
Open
all year.
Facilities
3 sitting rooms, honesty bar, gin bar, meeting rooms, in-room TV (Sky), small patio garden, unsuitable for disabled.
Background music
none.
Children
all ages welcomed, under-13s sharing with parents stay free in some rooms.
Dogs
not allowed.
Credit cards
Amex, MC, Visa.
Prices
room-only doubles from £229, singles from £209. Breakfast from about £12, à la carte (from room-service menu) £28.