Hazlitt's

Hazlitt's is a Georgian terrace on Frith Street in Soho, built in 1718, bought by Peter McKay and Douglas Blain in 1986 and open as a hotel six months later. It had been a nurses' hostel and was heading for conversion into flats. The hotel's own history covers numbers 5, 6 and 7; several current listings describe a fourth house, and the hotel itself prints no number. The same company still runs it, with The Rookery in Clerkenwell and Batty Langley's in Spitalfields, though both founders have left the board, McKay in 2022 and Blain in 2024. The name comes from the essayist William Hazlitt, who died at number 6 in 1830 and has a blue plaque beside the door.

The 30 rooms are named rather than numbered, after people connected with the houses. Categories differ by size and by what survived in each room, not by view. Club Singles average 15 square metres. Club Doubles are 19, sold with double or king beds and some four-posters. Superior Doubles average 23 and Luxury Doubles 24, listed with the same bed types, and the three Deluxe Doubles 33. The Junior Suites, Baron Willoughby and Teresa Cornelys, run to 43, and the Duke of Monmouth to 66, with a terrace of 24 square metres under a retractable roof. Downstairs sit the Library, which holds the honesty bar, and the gin bar in the Wardrobe, both for hotel guests only.

There is no restaurant, and the hotel says outright that you will not feel the lack of one. Breakfast is brought to the room, generally between seven and ten, and charged by the dish, GBP 14.95 for the continental and GBP 13.95 for a bacon sandwich. Room service runs 24 hours off a short menu with charcuterie from Cobble Lane Cured, smoked salmon from Secret Smokehouse and a chicken and asparagus pie at GBP 15.50. The wine list is chosen by Theatre of Wine. Soho is the restaurant here: Quo Vadis and Barrafina round the corner on Dean Street, Bar Italia at 22 Frith Street and Ronnie Scott's at 47.

The trade-off is the building. It is a 300-year-old terrace of narrow houses with steep stairs and floors that slant, and the hotel publishes nothing about lifts. One listing says a single house has one serving eight rooms, another says there are none, so plan for stairs. A few rooms take little daylight, and there are no twin rooms at all. Frith Street rooms hear Soho through the double glazing on a Friday night, and the fabric shows its age in corners at Soho rates. Take it if you want 18th-century London behind a door you could walk straight past, and intend to eat out every night anyway.