The Ned – London's hottest hotel and club
Read our full review of The Ned and take an access-all-areas video tour around the most talked-about hotel in London with founder Nick Jones, the man who launched 18 Soho Houses
I misread the sign by the door. For a moment I thought it said 'The End'. Far from it. The Ned isn't an ending but a new beginning for the City. There's nothing else like it in the Square Mile, or the rest of London. True, it's the brainchild of Nick Jones, founder of the Soho House empire, and here and there it shares a certain family resemblance with one or two of its younger, party-loving cousins. But really The Ned is its own thing: a 252-room hotel and members' club spread over eight floors above ground and three below, with nine restaurants, 15 bars, two pools, a spa, a barber shop, a boxing gym, and, by the door to the old Tapestry Room, a beautiful old cabinet with compartments designed specifically for the secure storage of bowler hats.
The Ned is named after the original building's architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens. When Lutyens got married, he started signing his name NEd, with a capital E as well as a capital N, because his wife, a dotty aristocrat whom he doted on, was called Emily. A sweetly romantic gesture, and typical of his playful nature. Sadly, though, theirs was not the most romantic of marriages and the playful part of it dried up quite early on. Some critics have gone so far as to say that Lutyens' shift from a whimsical Arts and Crafts style to a much more severe, obsessively geometrical idiom can be explained with reference to his unhappy sex life. The letter Emily wrote informing him that she would no longer tolerate the 'degradation' of his attentions is devastating. Kicked out of the marriage bed, he promptly turned to classicism.
Of which classicism The Ned is a fine example. It was built between 1924 and 1939 as the Midland Bank HQ and may well have been the grandest bank on the face of the earth. When Nick Jones saw the building in 2012, he knew immediately he wanted to do something with it but he also knew that it would be an enormous project, bigger than anything Soho House & Co could take on single-handedly. His chief investor, American billionaire Ron Burkle, agreed, and introduced him to Andrew Zobler, CEO of the Seydell Group, which owns the NoMad Hotel in New York.
Four years and £200 million later, you step off the street not into a hotel lobby but into a vast and outrageously grand food court, the former Banking Hall, which must be navigated between a seemingly endless series of Grade I-listed tellers' counters and a forest of soaring Corinthian columns clad in emerald-green verdite. There is seating here for 850. Cecconi's, the Californian-inspired Malibu Kitchen and the 24-hour brasserie, Millie's Lounge, in particular, are exemplary.
The solemn Edwardian grandeur of the space has been softened and sexed up, given a strokable, velvety sheen and a lewd blush. Although Lutyens' favourite scroll and starburst motifs on the floor and masonry have not only been preserved but multiplied, the overall look is a playful combination of Edwardian pastiche and something a little more louche and knowing. When I bumped into Adam Greco, the hotel's lead designer, I mentioned that it made me think of the wild and unexpected opulence you still encounter in some of the forgotten old hotels and bars in former gold-rush towns in the American West or Australia Outback. He looked at me as if I had downed one cocktail too many at the Nickel Bar. But I stand by the perception. It's a bank reupholstered as a bordello.
The same style has been applied to the rooms upstairs: sofas and armchairs in chartreuse, rose and aqua; coarsely textured paisley headboards and canopies; mahogany four-posters, palm-tree-shaped chandeliers; hand-knotted Afghan rugs; roll-top drinks cabinets with a full complement of cocktail-making tools.
Certain parts are available only to members and hotel guests. These include the rooftop - from which you could practically pour a drink on the head of the Bank of England's governor - and the underground Vault Bar. Entry to the latter is through a 20-tonne circular door, a metre thick and as full of mysterious mechanical bits as a Swiss watch. Inside, the walls are lined with 3,600 brushed-steel safe-deposit boxes, neat and numbered and gleaming in the low light. It's an absolute coup de théâtre.
Amid all this abundance it might seem churlish to grumble about missed opportunities. But I spotted one. There's a Lutyens' Grill, named, of course, for the building's architect. And there's a Zobler's Delicatessen, named for the Seydell Group's head honcho. Why on earth didn't anyone suggest a straight switch of names? It was Ned, after all, who designed modern India's capital city. And his love of terrible puns was legendary. Surely he should've been honoured with a second Lutyens' Deli.
Address: The Ned, 27 Poultry, London EC2R 8AJ
Telephone: +44 20 3828 2000https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=the+ned&oq=the+ned&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60j0j69i60l2j69i59.356j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Website: thened.com
Price: Double rooms from about £150
VIDEO: INSIDE THE NED Producer & Director: Kate Maxwell Assistant Producer: Laura Fowler Filming & Editing: James Hughes 2nd Camera: Richie Jenkins
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Steve KingInterior details at The Ned
The Ned
Steve KingSafety deposit boxes in the Vault bar
Bathroom interiors at The Ned
A bedroom at The Ned
A bedroom at The Ned
Bedroom interiors at The Ned
Cecconi's restaurant
Inside a bedroom at The Ned
A clock in the former banking hall
Steve KingA lampshade at The Ned
A bedroom at The Ned
Steve KingBedroom details at The Ned
Millie's Lounge at The Ned