Long considered something of a dry spot when it comes to catering, cocktails and high-rolling hospitality, the City of London now has a world class hotel, club, health spa and dining scene to rival anything in the west end. The Ned is a converted Gotham-style former Midland Bank building originally designed by architect Sir Edwin ‘Ned’ Lutyens, and now the latest project of Soho House CEO Nick Jones. Working with the team behind Manhattan’s NoMad, the Grade I listed, 1924 property is now a vast 240- room hotel and eight restaurant gastrodrome.
The bank’s central reception desk has been reconfigured as a stage for cabaret performances, while the subterranean vault, complete with massive, Fort Knox-grade door and walls of multiple, silvery safe deposit boxes, has been transformed into a Gekko-ish private club.
If Ian Fleming had designed a City bolt hole for James Bond, it would have looked like Ned’s Club. Upstairs, the hotel’s 240 rooms – suites, four poster doubles and ‘crash pads’ – are decorated in the “relaxed grandeur” aesthetic of a cruise liner from the 1930s.
Picture bedside tables in wicker, chocolate velvet armchairs, palm tree chandeliers, mahogany sleigh beds and Thomas Crapper bathroom furniture and you’re on the right track. “I guess you could say that what we have done with Soho House in the past has been lots of little art house movies,” says Nick. “This is more of a blockbuster.”
