For four decades after the Second World War, The Langham on Portland Place was not a hotel at all. The BBC used it as offices for Broadcasting House across the road, turned the Palm Court into its reference library and, in 1980, applied for permission to pull the building down. The application failed. The Langham reopened as a hotel in 1991, and weddings now take place in its restored Grand Ballroom, a chandeliered room for up to 375 guests that opens onto one of the oldest private gardens in the West End.
London’s largest hotel in 1865
The hotel was designed by John Giles and built by Lucas Brothers between 1863 and 1865, at a cost of £300,000. At the time it was the largest and most modern hotel in the city, with 100 water closets, 36 bathrooms and the first hydraulic lifts in England. The Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, performed the opening ceremony on 10 June 1865. The original company went into liquidation during an economic slump, and new owners bought the building for little more than half of what it had cost to build, then made a commercial success of it.
The building is listed Grade II. Historic England’s list entry describes it as heavy Italianate with some late medieval detail and French pavilion roofs, built of stock brick with Portland stone dressings, with a square belvedere rising at the north east corner. It stands where Portland Place meets Langham Place and closes the southern end of the avenue, which runs north to Regent’s Park.
Sherlock Holmes, Dorian Gray and the American guests
In 1867 the hotel appointed James Sanderson, a former officer of the Union Army, as general manager, and it built up a large American following that included Mark Twain. Napoleon III, Dvořák, Toscanini and Sibelius also stayed, and electric light was installed in the entrance and the courtyard in 1879.
In August 1889 the hotel was the scene of a literary commission. Joseph Marshall Stoddart met Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle at The Langham and asked each of them for a story for his magazine, Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four appeared in the magazine in February 1890 and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in July. Conan Doyle set parts of The Sign of Four and A Scandal in Bohemia at the hotel, and a City of Westminster green plaque recording the meeting was unveiled in 2010.
A hotel lent to the BBC
The Langham was hit hard by the Depression, and its owners tried to sell the site to the BBC, which built Broadcasting House across Portland Place instead. During the Second World War part of the hotel was used by the British Army until bomb damage forced it to close. After the war the BBC moved in, and in 1965 it bought the building outright. The restaurant became a staff bar and refreshment room.
The BBC’s plan to replace the hotel with an office building by Norman Foster was refused in 1980, and in 1986 the corporation sold it to the Ladbroke Group for £26 million. It reopened as the Langham Hilton in 1991 after a refurbishment of £100 million. Hong Kong’s Great Eagle Holdings bought it in 1995, extended it, and between 2004 and 2009 spent an estimated £80 million restoring it to its original form. The hotel is also the subject of a six part ITV documentary, Inside The Langham: Britain’s First Grand Hotel.
The Grand Ballroom and the courtyard garden
The Grand Ballroom is the room most weddings here are built around. It is 31 metres long, with a ceiling six metres high, columns along its length and chandeliers that were kept in the restoration. It holds up to 375 guests for a reception. All fifteen of the hotel’s wedding rooms are licensed for civil ceremonies, so the marriage itself can take place in the ballroom.
At the back of the hotel lies the Courtyard Garden, which dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. It opens directly from the ballroom, and in the warmer months the reception drinks are served outside before the dinner dance begins. The garden can also be hired on its own for an outdoor summer wedding.
The Portland Foyer, just beside the ballroom, is the alternative for the drinks. Guests gather there for cocktails and canapés before walking through to dinner, and the room can also be used on its own for a smaller dinner or party.
The Palm Court and Artesian
Not every wedding needs the ballroom. The Palm Court has served afternoon tea since the hotel opened. It now has an Art Deco interior beneath a six metre ceiling, with direct access to the ballroom, and takes up to 150 for a reception or 85 for a seated wedding breakfast.
Artesian, the hotel’s cocktail bar, can be taken for a wedding reception of up to 80 or a dinner of up to 45, with its own cocktail list and late dancing. The private dining rooms and the terrace can also be hired in full.
The Roux kitchen and the wedding team
Wedding menus come from the hotel’s kitchens and are designed by Michel Roux, using seasonal ingredients, sustainably sourced seafood and local produce. Special diets are catered for, and Kosher and Halal menus can be prepared for a party of any size. The hotel holds weddings of every faith as well as civil partnerships, and its wedding specialists take couples through the tastings, the flowers and the rest of the detail.
Staying on Portland Place
There are 380 rooms, so guests can stay under the same roof as the wedding. The Infinity Suite is set aside for the couple. It has two bedrooms, a semicircular sitting room, a marble bathroom with an infinity bath, a personal butler around the clock and windows looking across to All Souls Church and Langham Place. For a family who want to stay together, the Sterling Suite runs to as many as six bedrooms, with a drawing room with a piano, a dining room and a private media lounge.
The hotel also has the Chuan Body + Soul spa and a swimming pool, and The Wigmore, its British tavern, is next door.
Marylebone, Regent’s Park and the West End
The Langham stands at the meeting point of Marylebone and the West End. Oxford Circus Underground station is about a five minute walk away, with Regent’s Park and Great Portland Street stations a little further, and the park itself lies at the far end of Portland Place. Wedding prices are given on enquiry. The hotel’s own film of the Grand Ballroom is on YouTube, and a Greek wedding at the hotel was filmed by Zeus Films. For more of the neighbourhood, see our guide to Marylebone and our London wedding venues, and for another London hotel wedding in a restored ballroom, read our Edit on the Corinthia London.
Garden or foyer
At The Langham the date decides where the drinks are served. A wedding in the warmer months can take its guests out of the ballroom into the eighteenth century garden before dinner; at other times of year the guests gather in the Portland Foyer next door. Read the Langham profile and check your date.
