St. Ermin's Hotel, Autograph Collection

Story

St. Ermin's Hotel is a four-star central London hotel adjacent to St James's Park underground station, close to Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. The Grade II-listed late Victorian building, built as one of the early mansion blocks in the city is thought to be named after an ancient monastery reputed to have occupied the site pre-10th century. Converted to a hotel in 1896–99, it became during the 1930s, through the Second World War and beyond, a meeting place of the British intelligence services, notably the birthplace of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and where notorious Cambridge Five double agents Philby and MacLean met their Russian handlers.BackgroundThe St Ermin's Hotel in St James's Park, London was originally a horse-shoe shaped mansion block built in 1887–89 to the designs of E. T. Hall (1851–1923). Mansion blocks (high-status, serviced apartments) were first seen in Victoria Street, London in the 1850s and remain a feature of the area today. St Ermin's Mansions was typical in both plan and elevation; Hall employed the fashionable red-brick Queen Anne style for the exterior and grouped the apartments around a courtyard which functioned both as a carriageway and garden for the residents. Four entrances led off the courtyard into the apartments (the two entrances in the side wings still exist in their original form to this day). By 1894 the building appears to have been extended along Broadway as far as St Ermin's Hill.