Venues in South London
The river’s south bank and the ground behind it, from the South Bank terraces out to Greenwich and Hampton Court — views north, and buildings of the first rank.
Trivet
South Bank — Modern European Restaurant
Up to 70 guests
Jonny Lake and Isa Bal's two-Michelin-star restaurant near London Bridge, with a private dining room, a marble wine bar and a covered terrace for exclusive hire.
Le Pont de la Tour
South Bank — French Restaurant
Up to 500 guests
A Conran original on Butler's Wharf: classic French dining with Tower Bridge filling the windows, two private rooms and a riverside terrace.
TĪNG Restaurant
South Bank — Pan-Asian Restaurant
Up to 200 guests
Pan-Asian dining on level 35 of The Shard, with private dining rooms from an intimate ten to a 200-guest buyout.
Sollip
South Bank — Korean Restaurant
Up to 30 guests
A Michelin-starred Korean-French tasting-menu restaurant near London Bridge, its calm pale-wood dining room available for exclusive private use.
Battersea Power Station
Battersea — Event Space
Up to 250 guests
The Power Station's two restored control rooms, hired as private event space: Control Room A, the 1930s Art Deco room in Turbine Hall A, and Control Room B, the 1950s room turned cocktail bar above Turbine Hall B.
Trinity
Clapham — Modern British Restaurant
Up to 50 guests
Adam Byatt's MICHELIN-starred Clapham corner restaurant, with a self-contained casual room upstairs that hires exclusively for up to fifty.
Restaurant Story
South Bank — Modern British Restaurant
Up to 70 guests
Tom Sellers' two-Michelin-star tasting-menu restaurant near Tower Bridge, rebuilt in 2024 with an open-kitchen chef's table and available for private hire across three floors.
Sea Containers London
South Bank — Hotel
Up to 300 guests
A Tom Dixon-designed riverside hotel on the South Bank with intimate event spaces: a velvet screening room, a panelled private dining room with its own terrace, the Lyaness cocktail bar and the 12th Knot rooftop over the Thames.
art'otel London Battersea Power Station
Battersea — Hotel
Up to 350 guests
London's first art'otel, 164 rooms of Jaime Hayon's making on Electric Boulevard, with a sixteenth-floor pool and bar level with the Battersea chimneys.
Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court — Event Space
Up to 3,300 guests
Henry VIII's Great Hall, Wren's State Apartments and a Tudor beer cellar kept for dancing, let for private events across 60 acres of formal gardens beside the Thames.
Park Hyatt London River Thames
Battersea — Hotel
Up to 830 guests
Park Hyatt's UK debut in a 42-storey Nine Elms tower, with one of central London's largest ballrooms and four in-house restaurants and bars over the Thames.
Chez Bruce
Wandsworth — French Restaurant
Bruce Poole's one-star Wandsworth Common institution, open since 1995, with a hand-painted private dining room upstairs overlooking the common.
/ About South London▾
South London here is the river’s south bank and the ground behind it, from the South Bank arts quarter west through Battersea, Wandsworth and Clapham and out to Hampton Court, with Maritime Greenwich downstream to the east. The South Bank was rebuilt for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and has been London’s cultural terrace since. Battersea Power Station, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and completed in two halves between 1935 and 1955, reopened in 2022 after thirty-nine years empty. Greenwich holds Wren’s riverside hospital, Thornhill’s Painted Hall and Inigo Jones’s Queen’s House. Hampton Court is Tudor and baroque in one building, in sixty acres of formal garden.
The hire product is defined by two things the centre cannot easily supply: the river, and the room. Views north across the water are the common currency, from the South Bank terraces to the Battersea frontage, and a clipper or a private boat is a realistic way to move a guest list. The palaces and the naval college let a dinner sit inside a building of the first rank, with the capacities and the conservation rules that come with one. Wandsworth and Clapham supply the opposite: common-side restaurants and neighbourhood rooms of real standing, at prices the West End charges more for.
Access varies more than anywhere else in this directory. Waterloo, London Bridge and Victoria put the South Bank and Battersea within ten minutes of the centre, and the Northern line extension reached Battersea in 2021. Greenwich and Hampton Court are a train or a boat away and are better treated as a journey, which is often the point — guests arrive together and stay together. Evenings end by river or by rail rather than at a taxi rank, so publish the last departure with the invitation.