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A political history of Britain in the places where it happened: parliament and palace, courts and counting houses, and the streets where people pushed back.
A thousand rooms of imperial military bureaucracy, now a hotel anyone can walk into.
Empire
Also in Secrets & Espionage.
It was built because the Boer War had shown how badly Britain's army was organised, and opened in 1906 as an attempt at a modern War Office: around a thousand rooms and about two and a half miles of corridor, holding the officials who ran military policy, intelligence and supply for an empire. Churchill worked here as Secretary of State for War after the First World War, and so did thousands of people nobody has heard of, through both wars. It was closed to the public for a century. Turning it into a hotel has opened up a piece of Whitehall's internal geography that was never meant to be seen: not the ceremonial state, but the administrative factory behind it.
| Monday | Closed |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 17:00 – 01:00 |
| Wednesday | 17:00 – 01:00 |
| Thursday | 17:00 – 01:00 |
| Friday | 17:00 – 01:00 |
| Saturday | 17:00 – 01:00 |
| Sunday | Closed |
Hours from the page that lists them, checked 5 September 2026.
The bar is inside Raffles London at The OWO; the hotel's public rooms are open to non-guests.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.