St. Ermin's Hotel is a four-star central London hotel adjacent to

St James's Park Underground station St James's Park is a London Underground station near St James's Park in the City of Westminster, central London. It is served by the District and Circle lines and is between Victoria and Westminster stations. It is in Travelcard Zone 1. T ...

, close to

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...

, Buckingham Palace, and the

Houses of Parliament The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north bank ...

. The Grade II-listed late Victorian building, built as one of the early

mansion block An apartment (American English), or flat ( British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are m ...

s in the English capital, is thought to be named after an ancient monastery reputed to have occupied the site pre-10th century. Converted to a hotel in 1896–99, it became during the 1930s, through the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and beyond, a meeting place of the British intelligence services, notably the birthplace of the

Special Operations Executive The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...

(SOE), and where notorious

Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted ...

double agents Philby and MacLean met their Russian handlers. St Ermin's is now part of Marriott Hotels'

Autograph Collection Autograph Collection is a group of independent upper-upscale to luxury hotels within the Marriott International portfolio. The properties are independently owned and operated under the Autograph Collection name. History To grow in the post-2008 ...

. The hotel is owned by the family of Tei-Fu Chen, founder of

Sunrider Sunrider International, or Sunrider Corporation, is a privately owned multi-level marketing company headquartered in Torrance, California. Sunrider lists thousands of franchise stores and tens of thousands of distributors internationally. Sunri ...

International.

Background

St. Ermin's Hotel in

St James's Park St James's Park is a park in the City of Westminster, central London. It is at the southernmost tip of the St James's area, which was named after a leper hospital dedicated to St James the Less. It is the most easterly of a near-continuous c ...

, London, was originally a horse-shoe shaped

built in 1887–89 to the designs of Edwin T. Hall (1851–1923). Mansion blocks (high-status, serviced apartments) were first seen in Victoria Street, London, in the 1850s and remain a feature of the area today. St Ermin's Mansions was typical in both plan and elevation; Hall employed the fashionable red-brick Queen Anne style for the exterior and grouped the apartments around a courtyard, which functioned both as a carriageway and garden for the residents. Four entrances led off the courtyard into the apartments (the two entrances in the side wings still exist in their original form to this day). By 1894, the building appears to have been extended along Broadway as far as St Ermin's Hill. In 1896, the building was purchased with the intention of converting it into a hotel, and by 1899, the change of use was complete. Such conversions were not uncommon. Several mansion blocks at that time were built offering apartments with a bathroom but no kitchen. Instead, an army of servants provided service in rooms plus communal dining,

reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process invo ...

, and

smoking room A smoking room (or smoking lounge) is a room which is specifically provided and furnished for smoking, generally in buildings where smoking is otherwise prohibited. Locations and facilities Smoking rooms can be found in public buildings such ...

s provided ground floor reception areas ready made for the needs of a hotel. The new owners embarked on a major refurbishment programme undertaken by the theatre architect J. P. Briggs (1869–1944), providing a spectacular sequence of public reception rooms with very rich plasterwork. Briggs remodelled the far end of the courtyard, creating a neo-Baroque space with raised verandah leading into a double-height foyer dominated by an undulating balcony at gallery level, accessed via a double staircase. In the eastern side of the building Briggs created a double-height ballroom with similar undulating balcony (reminiscent of

theatre box In a theatre, a box, loge, or opera box is a small, separated seating area in the auditorium or audience for a limited number of people for private viewing of a performance or event. Boxes are typically placed immediately to the front, side ...

es) and unusual

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Moder ...

plasterwork linked by anteroom with the former restaurant (now The Cloisters), the cove of which was decorated with lively rococo plasterwork. Following a change of ownership in 2010 the hotel has again undergone substantial refurbishment. Recently the hotel has undergone an update to the main entrance of the hotel.

History

The medieval city of Westminster grew up along the approach roads to

, including Tothill Street and its continuation named Petty France, from the French wool merchants who had settled the street. Just south of Tothill Street was the Great Almonry, dating from the 13th century and from where alms were distributed. The site of the hotel itself, west of the Almonry, was then occupied by a chapel dedicated to St Ermin though both the Almonry and that chapel appear to have been demolished from around the 16th century and no trace of either now remains. Nevertheless, the network of alleys and paths that developed around such institutions over the course of the medieval period developed into the irregular streets that still pattern the area around the hotel today. The residential population of Westminster rose appreciably from the 17th century, partly illustrated by the construction of St Margaret Chapel, originally known as The New Chapell, immediately to the south of the hotel site in 1636 and where English astronomer Thomas Street was buried in 1689. By 1869 it was rebuilt on a larger scale as Christ Church and demolished in the 1950s following bomb damage. The burial ground it stood around still partly survives as gardens fronting Victoria Street. The mid- to late 19th century was an era of great change during which the area was transformed by the creation of Victoria Street in 1847–51 and the construction of the

District Railway The Metropolitan District Railway, also known as the District Railway, was a passenger railway that served London from 1868 to 1933. Established in 1864 to complete an " inner circle" of lines connecting railway termini in London, the first par ...

St James's Park underground station St James's Park is a London Underground station near St James's Park in the City of Westminster, central London. It is served by the District and Circle lines and is between Victoria and Westminster stations. It is in Travelcard Zone 1. T ...

opened in 1868. Next door the hotel has the

Caxton Hall Caxton Hall is a building on the corner of Caxton Street and Palmer Street, in Westminster, London, England. It is a Grade II listed building primarily noted for its historical associations. It hosted many mainstream and fringe political and art ...

, built in 1882–83, famous for the first meeting of the

Suffragette A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...

Movement in 1906, infamous for the revenge assassination of Michael O'Dwyer in 1940 and a celebrity civil marriage venue in the 1950s and '60s –

Roger Moore Sir Roger George Moore (14 October 192723 May 2017) was an English actor. He was the third actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in seven feature films between 1 ...

Peter Sellers Peter Sellers (born Richard Henry Sellers; 8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980) was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series ''The Goon Show'', featured on a number of hit comic songs ...

Diana Dors Diana Dors (born Diana Mary Fluck; 23 October 19314 May 1984) was an English actress and singer. Dors came to public notice as a blonde bombshell, much in the style of Americans Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren. Dors was ...

and

Elizabeth Taylor Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. ...

all took their vows there, some more than once. A suite of rooms in the hotel were taken by the

Women's Automobile and Sports Association A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as " women's rights" to denote female humans rega ...

as their club and headquarters from 1929. In 1965, a replica of

Westminster Hall The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...

was created in the hotel's ballroom to allow soldiers to rehearse their movements for the funeral of Winston Churchill.

Secrets

The St. Ermin's Hotel has a reputation for use by the UK's secret intelligence agencies. During the 1930s the hotel and the building at 2 Caxton Street were used by officers of the

Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intellige ...

(SIS or MI6) located close by at 54 Broadway to meet agents and is well documented from March 1938 as the headquarters first of SIS's Section D, headed by Australian George Taylor and then as home of the SOE, working under "Statistical Research Department" cover. Among the more famous personnel known to have worked from offices in the building are

Kim Philby Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British ...

Guy Burgess Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 195 ...

, Laurence Grand, H. Montgomery Hyde and Eric Maschwitz. CaxtonBar

Throughout the Second World War the building operated as a convenient annexe for SIS as it was surrounded by other secret organisations, including the London branch of

Government Communications Headquarters Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the ...

(GCHQ) in Palmer Street; MI9 in Caxton Street; the SIS Chief's office at 21 Queen Anne's Gate; the SIS offices in Artillery Mansions on Victoria Street and in the basement of St Anne's Mansions and the

MI8 MI8, or ''Military Intelligence, Section 8'' was a British Military Intelligence group responsible for signals intelligence and was created in 1914. It originally consisted of four sections: MI8(a), which dealt with wireless policy; MI8(b), ba ...

listening post on the roof of what was then the Passport Office in Petty France. In addition, the hotel was used regularly by SIS, MI5, and Naval Intelligence Division case officers, as mentioned in ''Snow'' by Madoc Roberts and Nigel West, while the SIS also interviewed prospective employees there, usually by Marjorie Maxse, the organisation's recruiter as detailed in Kim Philby's autobiography ''My Silent War''. Shortly before the war the hotel was the venue for

guerrilla warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run ...

classes run partly by MI6, and among those working for 'King and Country' within that group at the time was

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combina ...

, as well as art expert and member of the

spy ring,

Anthony Blunt Anthony Frederick Blunt (26 September 1907 – 26 March 1983), styled Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy. Blunt was professor of art history at the University of London, dire ...

. From 1981, the hotel was used by St Ermin's group of senior trade union leaders, who met secretly every month at the hotel to organise to prevent the left taking over the Labour Party. Four MPs also attended:

Denis Howell Denis Herbert Howell, Baron Howell (4 September 1923 – 19 April 1998) was a British Labour Party politician. He was a councillor on Birmingham City Council between 1946 and 1956. He was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham All Saints fro ...

, John Golding,

Denis Healey Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey, (30 August 1917 – 3 October 2015) was a British Labour politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979 and as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970; he remains the longe ...

, and Giles Radice. The group was created following the conference decision to establish an electoral college (40% trade unions, 30% members, 30% MPs) to elect the Labour Party leader and deputy.

Ownership

St. Ermin's Hotel is owned by

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wo ...

, based

multi-level marketing Multi-level marketing (MLM), also called network marketing or pyramid selling, is a controversial marketing strategy for the sale of products or services in which the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salaried workforce selling t ...

and hotel firm

International. It is part of Marriott Hotels'

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Ermins Hotel Hotels in London Grade II listed buildings in the City of Westminster Art Nouveau architecture in London Art Nouveau hotels Art Nouveau apartment buildings Residential buildings completed in 1889 Hotels established in 1899 Grade II listed hotels