Oriental Club

Founded in 1824 by Major General Sir John Malcolm, with the Duke of Wellington as its first and only President, the Oriental Club drew its early Members from the East India Company and the returning administrators, officers and travellers of Britain's Eastern empire. Since 1962 it has occupied Stratford House, a Grade I listed Georgian townhouse at the quiet end of Stratford Place, built in the 1770s for Edward Stratford, later 2nd Earl of Aldborough. The principal rooms carry the scale of that history: painted ceiling roundels, gilt cornicing and full-length windows over the street in the Main Drawing Room, cherry-wood panelling and two centuries of books in the Library, a small red-walled Billiards Room with its original scoreboard.

Events at the Club run through a Member. All private dining and entertaining is either a Member's own function or one a Member formally sponsors, sponsoring guests through the Function Team and remaining present throughout, in the tradition of a club whose bicentenary history reads, in its own words, as an ideal place for a party. Six principal rooms take private hire, from the Boardroom's long table for twelve through to the Main Drawing Room and its adjoining Small Smoking Room combined for larger receptions. The Club's brigade of chefs sets menus to order, and its Sommelier draws on the cellar built up since 1824.