The former headquarters of MI5 is to be turned into a private members’ hotel with a spectacular rooftop restaurant under a glass dome.
Leconfield House in Curzon Street, Mayfair served as Britain’s spycatcher base from 1945 to 1976, when MI5 moved to offices in Gower Street. Now property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz has submitted plans to Westminster council which reveal proposals to overhaul the 69,000 sq ft building and convert it into a 65-bed hotel.
Mr Tchenguiz bought the building for his Rotch property business in 2004 for about £140 million. He told property website CoStar News that the new venue would be the “highest-end hotel in the world”.
The plans include ground-floor shops and an additional three levels of basement containing spa, swimming pool and members’ club areas. They also propose a “rooftop dining venue and lounge area, with the impression of being outdoors under a bright and airy glass domed enclosure”.
The guest rooms will be across the first to fifth floors, with 13 rooms on each level. Each will be about 500 sq ft and will include a dressing room.
Leconfield House was built in 1939 and served as the headquarters of the London district of the British Army during the Second World War, when machine gun ports were built to defend it against possible attack from German paratroopers landing in Hyde Park. They were kept when MI5 arrived in case it was stormed by mobs from Speakers’ Corner.
Dame Stella Rimington, the former director general of MI5, began working there in June 1969. She later described how on her first day the other women in her office opened their desk drawers at midday “and produced exquisite cut glasses and bottles of some superior sherry, and partook of a rather elegant pre-lunch drink.”
