Dorset Square Hotel

Dorset Square Hotel was Tim and Kit Kemp's first hotel, opened in 1985 on the Regency square built over Thomas Lord's original cricket ground, the one before Lord's moved north to St John's Wood. The Kemps sold the property in 2002, bought it back in 2011, and reopened it in June 2012 with Kit Kemp's own redesign. Cricket has stayed the running joke since: bats and pads mounted like sculpture on the restaurant wall, a set of Victorian cricketer prints above the Drawing Room sofa, a wall of 192 lit ceramic pots each inscribed with a cricketing saying.

The Potting Shed is the restaurant and bar on the lower ground floor, and it takes exclusive hire for parties who want the room to themselves: up to 50 seated across the dining tables, 70 for a standing reception, the bar's stools and skylight giving it a distinct mood once the kitchen service ends. A smaller private dining option seats up to 20 for a sit-down dinner within the same space.

Upstairs, the Drawing Room is the house's original sitting room, kept much as a townhouse would keep it: a carved fireplace, an Honesty Bar, sash windows onto the garden square. It holds up to 20 for a meeting or a drinks reception, and reads as the hotel's room rather than a hired-out restaurant floor. Thirty-eight individually decorated bedrooms sit above, should a party want to stay the night.