Smith Square Hall

Thomas Archer began work on St John's, Smith Square in 1714 and finished it fourteen years later, at greater cost than any other church in its Parliamentary building programme. Legend has it that Queen Anne, asked how she wanted it to look, kicked over her footstool and snapped "Like that", which is one account of how the building came by its four corner towers. A bomb gutted it on the last night of the Blitz in May 1941. It stood roofless for two decades before being rebuilt to Archer's drawings and reopening as a concert hall in 1969.

What that restoration left is one grand room of unusual proportions: twelve columns, a canopy ceiling, a black and white chequerboard floor, wooden galleries down both sides, and a brass chandelier hung over the middle of it. The Hall takes 500 for a standing reception and 280 for a long-table dinner, with a built-in stage, theatre lighting and full soundproofing already in place. Below it the vaulted crypt keeps its exposed brickwork, runs its own bar and holds 180.

Fashion has been using the room for years, and Vivienne Westwood staged a London Fashion Week collection here in 2019. Film crews come for the Baroque interior, which has appeared in Atonement and Napoleon. The square outside is quiet and gas-lit, ringed by Georgian houses, a few minutes' walk from Westminster.