The Carlton Club

The Carlton Club was founded in 1832 and is the oldest of the Conservative clubs, having served as the party's original home before Conservative Central Office existed. It has occupied 69 St James's Street since 1940, when bombing forced it out of Pall Mall and into the Grade II* listed clubhouse that Arthur's had vacated the same year. The portraits on the walls are the club's own record of that history, and they are the first thing anyone notices: prime ministers and party grandees, hung floor to cornice, in rooms named for the figures who used them.

Six rooms are given over to private events, and they are unusually varied for one address. The Churchill Room is the largest, gilt-edged and hung with grand portraits, and the only room in the club licensed for civil ceremonies. The Wellington Room answers it in crimson, under ornate chandeliers. The Morning Room takes the light off St James's Street and keeps the mahogany bar from its days as the Members' Bar, which makes it the natural room for a reception. Below stairs, the Wine Room and the newly refurbished Cabinet Room handle the smaller, closer dinners, and the Disraeli Room, teal-walled and originally a smoking room, is the most intimate of them all. A glazed terrace is given over to dining at weekends.

Access runs through the membership. During the week every event must be sponsored by a full member of the club, which makes this a room for clients who are already inside the circle or can be introduced to it. The events office runs the diary and the club keeps twenty-four bedrooms upstairs for guests staying on.