The Rookery, London, United Kingdom

If I were on business in London and my employers had booked me into the Rookery, I would jump for joy. Just a glance through the windows of this boutique hotel’s three adjoining, faithfully restored 18th-century townhouses into the warmly lit drawing room beyond, and I would know I'd been sent not to the usual bland box of a business hotel, but to a quirky period home-from-home.

But then, I love quirky, especially in unexpected places such as the City, or, to be precise, Clerkenwell, just outside the Square Mile. In Dickensian times the area was known - for its thieves, vagabonds and prostitutes - as the Rookery, from which the boutique hotel takes its name. Nowadays Clerkenwell is more hip and edgy than edged out, although history has a way of repeating itself: not long ago the Rookery hit the headlines when Pete Doherty was arrested there after a fracas.

The facilities

So, the Rookery is quirky, creaky, admirably unfussy and cosy. You can curl up by the fire with a drink from the honesty bar, or in warm weather sit in the sliver of garden, wittily enlivened by a mural of cows being herded by two smocked peasants, portraits of the boutique hotel's proprietors (who also own the equally excellent and quirky Hazlitt’s in Soho). There's no restaurant, but who'd stay in anyway, when happening Clerkenwell beckons?

The rooms

In this boutique hotels 33 rooms we found charm and integrity in the owners' love of all things Georgian and Victorian. There was wooden panelling, heavy four-posters and oil paintings in the dimly lit, shadowy rooms. There's a minibar, flat-screen TV, wireless internet and air-conditioning in all the Rookery’s rooms as well. The subterranean bathrooms are complete with internal sash window, panelled door, Pepysian bust, roll-top bath, brass shower and matching heated brass towel rail for the fluffy towels.
Copyright 2007 The Hotel Guru