Robert Tchenguiz to turn former MI5 HQ into luxury hotel

Documents filed with Westminster City Council propose replacing the seventh floor to create a glazed restaurant area with garden terraces, and an additional eighth-floor winter garden lounge.

The sixth floor has been designed as a series of meeting and club rooms such as a library, snug, billiards room, parlour and 20-seat screening room.

The hotel would also feature a living wall, covering three sides of the building, and five accessible rooms, in which rails and other aids "will be designed in from the outset and not as ‘add-on' items".

EPR Architects has drawn up plans for the site, the firm which has also worked on London hotel projects including the Ned, the Kimpton Fitzroy, Rosewood London, Hyatt's Great Scotland Yard hotel, and is currently working on the Old War Office, which is due to become Raffles London at the OWO in 2022, and the transformation of Bow Street Magistrates' Court into the NoMad London.

Leconfield House was the headquarters of the domestic counter-intelligence and security agency MI5 from 1945 until the mid-1970s. Part of the top floor was said to be the ‘Pig and Eye Club', a drinking den for spooks, ensuring state secrets weren't spilled to Soviet agents or newspaper reporters in nearby pubs.

NoMad London to open in Bow Street Magistrates' Court in 2020 >>

Raffles to operate residences at Old War Office >>

Photo: Google