8 Northumberland Avenue

8 Northumberland Avenue occupies the former Hotel Victoria, built in 1887 a minute from Trafalgar Square and named for the Queen's Golden Jubilee. It held 500 bedrooms and was among the largest hotels of its type in London. The War Office took the building in 1939 and the state rooms spent seven decades closed to the public, the Ballroom partitioned into lecture theatres and the restaurant turned into a computer room. Charles Boyd and Adrian Brain reclaimed it for events in 2009, and the doors reopened to the public in the spring of 2010.

Two rooms carry the building, and they are near enough the same size. The Ballroom runs 31 metres under a gilded coffered ceiling, with Corinthian columns, wrought-iron chandeliers and stained glass; it takes 700 for a reception and 450 at dinner. The Old Billiard Room is its opposite: white, columned, deliberately plain, a blank canvas for 500. The Annex adjoins it. Taken together the building hires for up to 1,000, and the two principal rooms sit on one level, which is why they tend to be used in sequence rather than chosen between.

Production and catering are run in-house. The venue publishes high-fidelity sound systems, advanced lighting controls and projection screens, with an AV team based in the building, and the Ballroom's lighting rig washes the room in colour. Sound is regulated. The venue sits inside Westminster's noise-controlled core and there are bedrooms above the Ballroom, so amplified music carries a different finish time in each room, and the restrictions are written into the contract. The Old Billiard Room is the room that runs latest.