The Metropole Hotel opened on the corner of Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall Place in 1885, and the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, kept a reserved box in its ballroom. For much of the twentieth century the building served the government: it was commandeered in both world wars, then kept as offices, and the Ministry of Defence held press conferences in that same mirrored ballroom. Since 2011 it has been Corinthia London, and the restored Ballroom, with its own door onto Whitehall Place, is where the hotel now holds its largest weddings.
A grand hotel for the Charing Cross trains
In the 1880s Charing Cross station was bringing a growing number of international travellers into London, and four new hotels were commissioned along the newly developed Northumberland Avenue. The Metropole, a Gordon Hotels property, went up on a triangular site at its corner with Whitehall Place, between Trafalgar Square and the Thames Embankment. Frederick Gordon, its builder, was known for his restaurants and grand hotels. Work began in 1883, and the first prospectus recommended the hotel to “travellers from Paris and the Continent” arriving at the Charing Cross Terminus from Dover and Folkestone.
The Aero Club and the Alpine Club held their annual dinners there for several years, and in 1896 the hotel was the gathering point for competitors in the first London to Brighton run. The Prince of Wales entertained guests at the Metropole on a number of occasions and used its Royal Suite, thought to have been the first floor rooms with bowed windows facing Whitehall Place.
Taken over by Whitehall
The hotel stood close to Downing Street and the ministries, and that decided its next chapter. In August 1914, on the night before the British Expeditionary Force embarked for France, the two men who would command it during the war, Field Marshals John French and Douglas Haig, both stayed in the building, which the government commandeered for its staff during the First World War. The Metropole reopened after the war, with the Midnight Follies cabaret among its fixtures, until 1936, when the government leased the entire building as offices for £300,000 a year.
The government requisitioned it again for the Second World War, when Room 424 became the first home of MI9 and the Special Operations Executive. Afterwards the building was bought from Gordon Hotels and stayed in government hands as an overflow building for the Ministry of Defence, and from the mid 1960s until 1992 it housed most of the Defence Intelligence Staff. In the James Bond strip in the Daily Express the artist Yaroslav Horak often drew the Metropole Building as the headquarters of MI6.
The building stood empty from 2004. In 2007 it was sold with the neighbouring 10 Whitehall Place for £130 million to a consortium that included Malta’s IHI, and in September 2008 Westminster City Council approved plans to turn the two buildings into a hotel and residences. The hotel reopened in 2011 under Corinthia, the group founded in Malta by the Pisani family, and in November that year the film Skyfall was announced at a press conference in the hotel.
The Ballroom and its own front door
The Ballroom has been restored to its Victorian design, keeping its ornate original stucco ceiling, with full length windows for daylight and chandeliers for the evening. A private entrance on Whitehall Place gives it an arrival of its own from the street, and beside the room there is a pre-function area and a dedicated pantry. The room is more than 21 metres long and at least 6.8 metres high. It takes up to 250 guests for a ceremony, 180 at a seated dinner and 350 for a standing reception. Corinthia London is licensed for civil ceremonies in the Ballroom, the Courtroom and the Nelson Room.
Ballroom hire starts from £5,000, with a minimum spend that varies by season. The hotel’s sample wedding, with a Laurent-Perrier Champagne and canapé reception, a three course wedding breakfast, wine with the meal and a Champagne toast, comes to about £220 a person. A wedding breakfast in the Ballroom also brings the Corinthia Touches, among them a night in a Signature Suite for the couple, a menu tasting for up to four, the dance floor, stage and sound system, and preferential room rates for guests.
The Courtroom and the admirals’ rooms
The Courtroom is the second large room, crescent shaped, with high ceilings, chandeliers, floor to ceiling windows and a pre-function area of its own. It takes up to 120 for a ceremony, 90 at dinner and 170 for a reception, which suits a wedding larger than the Mezzanine rooms allow but smaller than the Ballroom.
Two of the Mezzanine rooms are named for admirals who fought at Trafalgar. The Nelson Room, named in honour of Admiral Lord Nelson and the largest space on that floor, holds up to 70 for a reception and 40 at dinner. The Codrington Room is named after Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who commanded HMS Orion in the battle in 1805, and seats 22 for a private wedding dinner beside its large arched window. The hotel’s smaller meeting rooms carry the names Collingwood, Hardy, Victory and Orion.
Kitchens, restaurants and the wedding breakfast
Catering is in house, and kosher catering is among the options. The chefs write the menu with the couple, from canapés and a cocktail reception to a candlelit banquet. The hotel’s pâtissiers make the wedding cake, and its mixologists design signature cocktails to the couple’s taste. FLOWERBX runs the florist in the hotel, and Corinthia keeps a Little Black Book of trusted suppliers for everything else.
For a smaller wedding breakfast, two of the restaurants have private rooms. Rosetta, at Mezzogiorno by Francesco Mazzei, takes its inspiration from the chef’s mother and seats 18, or 20 in a closer arrangement, from a minimum spend of £2,500. The private dining room at Kerridge’s, Tom Kerridge’s first London restaurant, seats 16 around a wooden table designed by Jolyon Oliver, from a minimum spend of £2,000, with the option of watching a personal chef prepare each course. The Northall private dining room is a third choice. Velvet by Salvatore Calabrese is the hotel’s Champagne and cocktail bar, and The Garden serves food outdoors all year.
Penthouses above Whitehall Place
Corinthia has 279 bedrooms, 62 of them suites and seven of them penthouses, so the couple, their families and their guests can stay in the building where they celebrate. Each penthouse is designed differently. The Hamilton Penthouse, inspired by Lady Hamilton, looks across the rooftops to Nelson’s Column from a large roof terrace with an open fire pit and a jacuzzi, and has its own kitchen, dining room and wine cellar. The Royal Penthouse, decorated with Chinoiserie, opens onto a roof terrace with views over the Thames and the South Bank, a dining room for ten and a full kitchen. Butlers look after the penthouses and some of the suites.
The thermal floor at Biome by Corinthia London, open to hotel guests, has a swimming pool, a vitality pool, an amphitheatre sauna and a steam room, and the Daniel Galvin at Corinthia hair salon is in the building. Afternoon tea is served in the Crystal Moon Lounge, beneath a Baccarat chandelier.
Still a short walk from Charing Cross
The station the Metropole was built to serve is about 200 metres away. St Pancras International is three miles from the hotel, about half an hour by taxi, Heathrow 17 miles and about an hour, and London City Airport 8.5 miles and about 45 minutes. The whole hotel can be booked for exclusive use on enquiry. Corinthia’s own film of weddings at the hotel is on YouTube, and the hotel has its own issue of 5 Star Wedding Magazine. For other London weddings in buildings with a past, 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 Corinthia London is the size of the guest list, because it chooses the room, from the Ballroom down to a private dining table for sixteen. Couples who know their number can read the Corinthia Hotel London profile and check your date.
