By Lee Tulloch
Interior elan: The Ham Yard bar.
OUR RATING 4 OUT OF 5
TRIP ADVISOR RATING 4 OUT OF 5
Enter the alternate universe of a distinctive London hotel.
London's Ham Yard Hotel must be one of the most intriguingly named hotels in the world.
It's not exactly a name that would lure anyone to this hidden part of Soho, tucked away behind Piccadilly Circus.
But there's nothing the slightest bit porky about the ninth hotel from the Firmdale Group, which owns and operates a portfolio of superbly located hotels in London and New York, most notably The Covent Garden Hotel and New York's Crosby Street Hotel.
Ham Yard, with its courtyard of flown-in mature oak trees and verdant roof vegetable garden, is a vibrant oasis among the sex shops, pubs, cafes and boutiques of this still-a-bit-sleazy part of the world, a bit of a village in its own right, giving visitors the feeling that they've stumbled off the grotty pavements of the West End into a gaily coloured alternate universe of storybook whimsy.
Ham Yard gained its name from a public drinking house, The Ham. From the early 18th century the pub stood on the corner of Great Windmill Street, now the location of the Lyric Tavern. The 3/4-acre block was badly damaged during World War II and remained mostly derelict afterwards, apart from being the location of some famous jazz clubs of the 1950s and 60s, including The Scene, where The Who first played.
For hoteliers Tim and Kit Kemp the bombsite was a perfect location for their next development. Anyone who staggered down here to listen to a gig in the 1960s would be shocked by the new £90 million ($165 million) complex, which features a 91-bedroom hotel, 24 spacious rental apartments and 13 retail stores, including a corner boutique by much-loved Australian accessories brand Dinosaur Designs. The buildings wrap around a leafy courtyard with a pleasant outdoor cafe and bar, barely a stone's throw from the tawdry Windmill Club, one of London's longest running lap-dancing joints.
Kit Kemp is an interior designer famous for her brilliant juxtapositions of print, texture and form and her clever fabric designs, which take their cues from an immense range of inspiration – in Ham Yard there are fabrics based on bamboo, snails, botanical designs, African abstracts, tea leaves, movie posters and squiggly ric-rac braid (Kemp's fragrant hotel amenities line is called Rik Rak.)
All the Firmdale hotels feature her joyous interiors. Each room is different and if you don't enjoy the wild pinks, royal blues and yellows that jazz up some rooms, there'll be another room for you.
I checked into room 404, which has a palette of grey tweeds, with a charcoal grey chalk-striped wall opposing a wall of grey clouds. The only pops of colour are two bright blue felt dining chairs. But even in this relatively subdued room I count at least a dozen different textures of grey – from the tie-dyed curtains to the herringbone grey wool chairs and the marble throughout the bathroom.
Kit Kemp brings her tremendous energy to every corner of the hotel. Have you recently stayed in a hotel with its own 1950s bowling alley, imported from Texas, where you can bowl in vintage bowling shoes? How many hotels do you know that have a 190-seat state-of-the-art screening room and stage with fluoro orange chairs by cult Italian furniture maker Poltrona Frau, electric blue carpets, purple walls and hot pink taffeta curtains? Or a bar that has a several metre high "helter skelter" of oranges winding down from the mezzanine above to the juicer below?
If this all sounds like some kind of crazed Wonderland without Alice – one of those hotels that puts design before comfort - it's not. Throughout the hotel surfaces are plump, cushiony, luxurious. Downstairs, the lobby, bar and restaurant are flanked by two beautiful rooms, a signature of Firmdale hotels.
One is a library with a French stone fireplace, overstuffed sofas and walls of books specially curated by Philip Blackwell, formerly of venerable London bookstore Blackwells. The books that have been chosen are interesting reads and all the dust jackets have been removed to give the shelves a more elegant look. There's an honesty bar where guests can help themselves to beverages and snacks.
At the other end of the ground floor is the drawing room, again with a fireplace, comfortable sofas, eclectic antiques and an honesty bar but with a more contemporary, ethnic feel to the furnishings. In between is the all-day Ham Yard Bar and Restaurant, which opens on to the terrace and is perfect for breakfasts on weekends - the buffet table is a reasonable £12 ($22). The restaurant flows into the conservatory, where meals, snack and afternoon tea are served. There are white wicker sofas under a glass atrium roof.
The basement Soholistic Spa is the first full spa in any Firmdale Hotel. There's a small gym and a hypoxic studio for altitude training.
Other hotel features are a car park with hydraulic parking, a nightclub, The Croc, and also some spectacular function rooms.
The night I arrived, the hotel hosted a party for Simon Cowell and the X Factor on the fourth-floor rooftop terrace. Fans and paparazzi were waiting downstairs at the entrance, which made my arrival a dramatic one. Yet, despite its popularity for such events, the hotel isn't overly noisy – just buzzing. Rooftop events have to finish at 9pm so the guests are not disturbed. Laughter echoes up from the courtyard throughout the day but the outdoor bar also closes at a reasonable hour at night.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the hotel's impressive and entertaining art collection, including a dramatic bronze courtyard sculpture by Turner Prize-winning artist Tony Cragg, an Alexander Calder tapestry, and works by Australian painter Shilo Engelbrecht, whose splashy watercolours have been made into fabric to cover some elevator walls. Most popular is a mesmerising wall of analogue clocks by Human Movement 1988 – each minute, the hands of the clocks change to form the digital time.
A bit hard to explain, like the hotel itself. You need to see it for yourself.
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
See www.visitbritain.com.
STAYING THERE
The Ham Yard Hotel, One Ham Yard, London W1D 7DT; Double rooms from £310 ($570) inc vat. See www.firmdalehotels.com/hotels/london/ham-yard-hotel
GETTING THERE
Cathay Pacific has more than 70 flights a week from six cities in Australia to Hong Kong, connecting to five daily flights from Hong Kong to London Heathrow, in First, Business, Premium Economy and Economy Class. See www.cathaypacific.com.au
The writer was a guest of The Ham Yard Hotel and Cathay Pacific.
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