Original Scotland Yard site to become hotel ‘of the quality of Chateau Marmont’
An Edwardian building on the site of the original Scotland Yard is to be converted into a 92,000 square foot, 235-bedroom 5-star hotel of the “world class… quality of The Mercer or the Chateau Marmont” by the Galliard Group in association with The Crown Estate.
Expected to open in June 2016, the £100 million 7-storey hotel at 3-5 Great Scotland Yard will undergo a £50 million refurbishment starting in January 2014 and will incorporate the adjoining building, 1 Great Scotland Yard, as a £10,000 per night “VIP” suite.
Chosen by Sir Robert Peel as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 and used by them until 1890, 3-5 Great Scotland Yard was the location from where the 1864 Plaistow Marshes murder and 1888 Jack the Ripper crimes were investigated. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes worked out of the building and others to have immortalised ‘The Yard’ in fiction include Charles Dickens, P. D. James and Ian Fleming.
Following, ‘The Met’s’ move to a new location, which was named New Scotland Yard, the current Edwardian building was constructed on the site in 1910. It served as the British Army Recruitment Office and Royal Military Police headquarters and was famously the location from where Lord Kitchener told World War One recruits: “Your Country Needs You”. Cells in the basement were used for deserters between 1914 and 1918 and legend has it that Rudolf Hess was also interrogated there in May 1941.
In 1982, the building was refurbished and it subsequently became the Ministry of Defence Library. It was the scene of the first IRA attack outside of Northern Ireland in 1973 when a car bomb exploded outside and in 2007, scenes from Atonement starring Keira Knightley were filmed there.
Just as a new chapter begins for 3-5 Great Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police are also on the move. A third reincarnation of Scotland Yard will be created on Victoria Embankment when the force move to a smaller building there from their current location in Broadway, Westminster in 2015.
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