In 1905 the Morning Post, a London daily founded in 1772, commissioned new offices on the island block where the crescent of Aldwych meets the Strand, and gave the job to Mewès and Davis, the architects of The Ritz in London and Paris. The paper was written, edited and printed inside, with its presses in the basement where the swimming pool of One Aldwych is today, and the private rooms still take their names from those years. An independently owned hotel since 1998, One Aldwych is licensed for weddings of up to 80 guests, with the ceremony, drinks, wedding breakfast and evening party all held under its roof.
Offices for the Morning Post on a new London street
Aldwych was a new street when the building went up, laid out in the first years of the twentieth century in a scheme that swept away the old lanes around Wych Street. The Morning Post took the block at the start of the curve, and Mewès and Davis, the Anglo-French practice that also designed the Royal Automobile Club on Pall Mall, drew it in their favoured mix of Louis XV and Louis XVI detail.
The construction was modern for its day: an early steel frame, like The Ritz, faced in grey Norwegian granite under a roof of slate and copper. The frame let the building go up in about two years. On the outside it has tall arched windows on the ground floor, carved female heads on the keystones of the entrances, wrought iron balconies, and a bowed corner on the Strand that holds the main door. In 1907 the paper’s editorial and advertising staff moved in, and the printing presses were installed below ground.
Magazines, ministries and a new roofline
When the Morning Post changed hands in the 1920s, the Inveresk Paper Company bought the building. In 1928 the Illustrated London News moved its headquarters here, when a merger brought it together with The Sketch and six former rivals, and The Tatler was among the other magazines based in the building. The building is still listed under the name it carried then, Inveresk House.
The late 1920s also changed its outline. The attic storeys were rebuilt and raised by two floors, and the original dome was taken down; the copper dome on the Strand corner today belongs to that rebuilt top. Over the following decades the offices housed the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Works, the Prudential Assurance Company and Lloyds Bank, and for a time the Aldwych Brasserie. Historic England listed the building at Grade II in May 1986.
Private owners then converted it into a hotel behind the Edwardian façade, and One Aldwych opened in 1998. It has stayed independent, with no hotel group behind it. The designer Robert Angell remodelled the bedrooms and suites in 2019, when Fabled Studio reworked the Lobby Bar and Indigo restaurant, and Fabled returned for a further refresh before the hotel reopened in 2025 after a short closure. The Lobby Bar fills the high ceilinged hall that was once the newspaper’s reception.
Downstairs, behind a street door of its own
The largest room for a wedding is Downstairs at One Aldwych, which is hired for exclusive use and has its own entrance from the street. Guests come down a copper staircase to a fully stocked bar of about 60 square metres on the mezzanine, and below it is the main room, open plan and about 240 square metres, on the lower ground floor. It is arranged flexibly to suit the occasion, and seats 60 for lunch or dinner or takes 120 for a standing reception.
One Aldwych is approved for civil ceremonies from the ground floor to the sixth floor, and it hosts weddings of up to 80 guests. The events team introduces couples to the private rooms and suites and matches the room to the numbers, and talks through the licensed dates. Guests move between rooms rather than venues, and at the end of the night the wedding party simply goes upstairs.
The Press & Type Room and The Library
The names of the private rooms come from the newspaper years. The Press & Type Room, on the mezzanine, seats 40 for dinner and takes 50 standing, with large windows that look onto the street. Its built in 75 inch screen can be hidden for a private dinner, and its hybrid event equipment can stream an occasion live to people in other places.
The Library on the ground floor is the residents’ lounge, open from breakfast until the early hours, and it can be taken for drinks receptions of up to 40. It has sofas, floor to ceiling windows onto the surrounding streets, shelves of books on fashion, design, architecture and travel, and pieces of contemporary art. For the smallest celebrations the kitchen can serve a private dinner for up to six inside one of the suites.
Menus from Indigo’s kitchen and flowers from the lobby studio
All catering is in house. Wedding menus are planned with Executive Chef Edward Dutton and his team. Dutton also oversees Indigo, the hotel restaurant that overlooks the Lobby Bar and serves an entirely gluten free menu at lunch and dinner. The kitchen works with independent British producers and seasonal ingredients, and prepares vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, kosher, halal and allergen specific menus. The team helps with the choice of Champagne and wine, and the bartenders can create cocktails for the couple.
Prices start with the private dining menus. On the autumn and winter 2026 menu, a set meal of one starter, one main course and one dessert for the whole table is £95 a head, rising to £160 for a choice of two dishes at each course on the night. Prices include VAT, a discretionary 15 per cent service charge is added, and canapés are £6 each. Any minimum spend is agreed with the events team according to the room, the date and the numbers.
The flowers come from Mark Siredzuk, the resident florist, whose studio, Flowers at One, makes the displays in the hotel lobby. He works to the couple’s budget from the first conversation and shares early sketches and design ideas before the final arrangements, and in 2026 he was named on the Walpole Power List. The hotel also keeps a private collection of some 400 pieces of contemporary art and sculpture, with an original work in every bedroom and suite. Emily Young’s carved limestone head of Dionysus stands in reception.
A hundred and one rooms above the wedding
There are 101 bedrooms and suites: 85 bedrooms of 21 to 29 square metres, some of them interconnecting, and 16 suites. The four Signature Suites are the natural choices for the couple and for getting ready. The Terrace, the largest at 110 square metres, is on the fifth floor, with two double bedrooms, a living and dining room and a private terrace for eating outside above the rooftops. The Somerset has a circular sitting room with river views and a dressing room, and can connect to up to three more bedrooms. The Waterloo Bridge looks across its namesake bridge and can also join neighbouring rooms, and The Dome puts its circular bedroom directly under the copper dome. The Terrace, the Somerset and the Waterloo Bridge each include a complimentary car transfer to or from the airport, and the hotel has its own short film of The Dome.
Wedding guests can be offered preferential rates, and group bookings of eight or more bedrooms bring extras that include a drinks reception with canapés and a glass of Champagne in The Library on the first or last evening. Couples who would like the whole hotel to themselves can discuss it with the team. Residents also have the Health Club, with its 18 metre lap pool, kept chlorine free by a mineral cleaning system, a sauna, a steam room, a Technogym studio and treatments with Natura Bissé and OSKIA products. One Aldwych has been a certified B Corp since 2024.
The Royal Opera House, Somerset House and the West End theatres are all a short walk away. Covent Garden and Embankment Underground stations are five minutes on foot and Holborn ten; Charing Cross station is five minutes by taxi, Blackfriars ten and St Pancras International about 30. London City Airport is about half an hour by car, Heathrow about an hour and Gatwick about 75 minutes. For more London weddings in historic buildings, read about St. Pancras London and Trinity House on Tower Hill, browse London wedding venues, or see the legal requirements for marrying in London.
The decision that shapes a wedding at One Aldwych is the form of the meal. Downstairs seats 60 for a wedding breakfast, while a standing reception there lets a full wedding of 80 celebrate in one room, so couples who have settled that question can read the One Aldwych profile and check your date.
