One Aldwych: the small house on the point of the crescent

A newspaper office with a prow

One Aldwych occupies the wedge of land where the Aldwych crescent peels away from the Strand, in a building put up in the first decade of the last century for the Morning Post. Its architects, Mewès and Davis, also gave London the Ritz, and the family likeness shows in the stone: rounded corners, tall arched windows and the easy confidence of an Edwardian building that knew exactly where it stood. The newspaper has long gone. The hotel moved in at the end of the 1990s and kept the shape, including the sharp point where the two roads meet and the building turns like the bow of a ship.

By the standards of this stretch of the Strand it is a small house. The Savoy and the Waldorf are larger and busier, with lobbies that hum all evening; One Aldwych runs at a lower volume, and for an evening date that is precisely the point of it.

The Lobby Bar, tall windows and a rower

Most of the ground floor is bar. The room follows the triangular footprint of the building, rises through two storeys and is lit by windows so tall that the buses on the Aldwych seem to glide past at shoulder height. In the middle, a large sculpture of an oarsman pulls on his oars in a boat that is going nowhere, and he has become the easiest landmark in the room for telling somebody where you are sitting.

Early in the evening the bar fills with people on their way to a show, then empties at a quarter past seven, as reliably as a tide going out. That lull is the best moment in the building. A companion meeting you at half past seven finds the room calm, the light coming in off the Strand and the staff with time to talk, and the first drink is unhurried in a way that is rare within earshot of a theatre.

Karolina, whose sharp black hair puts her among the raven haired names on the call sheet, lives a few minutes away, keeps the season's opera dates in her diary and likes the corner by the windows; Angelika prefers the stools, closer to the bartenders and further from the view.

Why a small hotel keeps a secret well

Privacy in a hotel is less about locks than about traffic. A big house hides you in a crowd; a small one hides you in its quiet. At One Aldwych the corridors are hushed, the lifts are rarely shared and the staff have the manner of people who have seen everything and remember none of it, which is exactly the right kind of discretion for a date.

Two practical notes follow from that. First, arrive as any visitor would, through the front door on the Aldwych side, and let the evening begin in the bar rather than the corridor. Second, if you plan to go upstairs later, keep the room key with you when you come down, so that nobody has to explain anything at the lift. The rest is ordinary good manners, which a house of this size notices and quietly returns.

Two minutes to the stage doors

The hotel's real advantage is its neighbours. The Aldwych Theatre and the Novello stand along the crescent, the Lyceum sits a minute behind on Wellington Street, the Duchess and the Theatre Royal Drury Lane are a short stroll up Catherine Street, and the Savoy Theatre lies in a straight line west along the Strand. Few addresses in London put so many curtains within such easy reach.

That changes the shape of a date. You can leave the bar at ten past seven, be in your seat by twenty past and be back at the oarsman by half past ten, before most of the audience has found its coats. Sonya, who likes the earliest curtains and a calm supper afterwards, treats the building as the ideal base for exactly that kind of evening. The streets involved are mapped on the Strand and Aldwych page, and the theatres further north on the Covent Garden page.

Waterloo Bridge begins almost at the hotel's door. A walk across it after the show, with the South Bank lit up ahead and the dome of St Paul's off to the left, is the obvious way to stretch an evening by twenty minutes, and Laura, who rates that crossing above every other view in London, will happily take it in either direction.

Below stairs: a pool and a private screen

For a longer stay, the building keeps two surprises underground. The swimming pool is known for playing music beneath the surface of the water, which sounds like a gimmick until you have floated in it for five minutes. There is also a small private screening room, which can be booked for a film of your own choosing and makes an unusual opening hour for anybody who would rather watch something together than talk across a menu.

Neither needs to be part of the plan. Together they make the hotel a place where a night feels like a stay rather than a room with a bed in it, and both are worth asking about at reception when you check in.

Shaping the date around the building

Most evenings here settle into one of three shapes. Ninety minutes at £400 suits a drink in the Lobby Bar and a quiet hour upstairs. At £900, the four hour dinner date takes in a first drink at half past six, a 7.30 curtain at one of the crescent theatres and a late bite afterwards, and it is the natural fit for the building. The ten hour night at £1,800 turns the evening into a stay, with the pool waiting in the morning.

The theatre and dinner format is explained in full under pre-theatre dinner dates, and the whole ladder of lengths is on the rates page. When you know the evening you want, the booking page has the message ready to copy and send.