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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),〔William Mackenzie, ''Secret History of SOE: Special Operations Executive 1940–1945'', St Ermin's Press, 2000, ISBN 1-903608-11-2〕 and where notorious Cambridge Five double agents Philby and MacLean met their Russian handlers. ==Background== The 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).〔''The Builder'', 25 June 1887 (pp. 948–49).〕 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. In 1896 the building was purchased with the intention of converting it into a hotel and by 1899 the change of use was complete. Such conversions were not uncommon. Several mansion blocks at that time were built offering apartments with bathroom but no kitchen. Instead, an army of servants provided service in rooms plus communal dining, reading and smoking rooms provided ground floor reception areas ready made for the needs of a hotel.〔"'Babylonian Flats' in Victorian and Edwardian London", ''The London Journal'', Vol. 3 / 3, November 2008, p. 239.〕 The new owners embarked on a major refurbishment programme, undertaken by the theatre architect J. P. Briggs (1869–1944),〔''Guide to British Theatres: 1750–1950'', A. & C. Black, 2000.〕 providing a spectacular sequence of public reception rooms with very rich plasterwork. Briggs remodelled the far end of the courtyard, creating a neo-Baroque space with raised verandah leading into a double-height foyer dominated by an undulating balcony at gallery level, accessed via a double staircase. In the eastern side of the building Briggs created a double-height ballroom with similar undulating balcony (reminiscent of theatre boxes) and unusual Art Nouveau plasterwork linked by anteroom with the former restaurant (now The Cloisters), the cove of which was decorated with lively rococo plasterwork. Following a change of ownership in 2010 the hotel has again undergone substantial refurbishment, restoring the building back to the original splendour created by Briggs. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「St Ermin's Hotel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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