Reviewed By Ellie Burns

Icon of Park Lane

An icon in the true sense of the word, the origins of Grosvenor House date back to the 1700’s on land owned by the Grosvenor family, a family who soon became the richest urban landlords in England. In 1808 Lord Grosvenor purchased the property from the Duke of Gloucester, brother of King George III, and transformed Gloucester House into Grosvenor House. The surrounding area still possesses echoes of the Grosvenor Family’s prominence in an abundance of street names, roads and squares. In 1929 Albert Octavius Edwards obtained the lease and began to transform the grand house into a luxury hotel with the aid of employing architects L. Rome Guthrie and Sir Edwin Lutyens. Inspired by the ample proportions of the New York hotels and built to ‘catch every available sun ray’, the hotel was opened in May 1929 featuring 472 rooms. Interestingly, the famed ‘Great Room’ was originally an ice rink, the only rink in London to feature in a hotel and the very rink in which Queen Elizabeth II learnt to skate in 1933.

The hotel saw a four-year, multi-million pound restoration programme in 2008 and was rebranded as a JW Marriott Hotel. The hotel’s rich history has seen royalty, ice skating, government occupati...Read More