The Farmers Club

The Farmers Club has been on Whitehall Court since 1904, and it wears the address lightly. Founded in 1842 by the agricultural writer William Shaw as a London gathering place for farmers, it is the industry's home in town: a bar hung with sporting prints and oxblood leather, a lounge of blue-painted bookcases and deep armchairs, a restaurant that sources from British growers its own members introduced, and a terrace looking straight out over the Thames. The building is a minute from Parliament and the Embankment, and the club keeps the quiet of somewhere much further from either.

The hire offer sits on the upper ground and ground floors. The Farmers Suite is the largest room, bright and panelled in white, with three sets of windows over Embankment Gardens and the river; a concertina wall divides it into the Hudson and Cumber Rooms when a smaller shape is wanted. Both halves carry integrated audio-visual and sound, so a dinner in the suite can run to speeches without anything being wheeled in. Nearby, the Club Room and the Committee Room are period pieces on a domestic scale, each with its own fireplace: the Club Room holds the club's memorabilia, including a pavilion plaque from its 1964 opening by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

Two things are worth knowing before enquiring. The function rooms are let to members and non-members alike, which is unusual among the Whitehall and Pall Mall clubhouses and stated plainly in the club's own bylaws. And a dress code applies to guests at any booked function: a collared shirt and a jacket, or the equivalent, with a tie optional. Catering is the club's own kitchen, seasonal and British, and menus are written around the occasion.