To one side was the Bow Street Police Station, home to the city’s first police force, known as the Bow Street Runners (surely there’s a Netflix series in that?). Carriages once drove through the 13ft-high entrance, dropping off prisoners in the courtyard. Author Henry Fielding was a magistrate Oscar Wilde, Emmeline Pankhurst and the Kray Twins were tried here, Vivienne Westwood too, for a punk-era breach of peace in 1977. Until 2006 this was the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, dating back to the days when half the places round here were gin shops. What's the story? Pull up a pew – there’s a lot of history. The restaurant’s been booked out for weeks half of London is champing at the bit to land a seat. A catwalk leading from the lobby to the bedrooms forms a balcony for people-watching. Daylight paints the space in shifting watercolour hues. Centre stage is the courtyard restaurant, a three-storey glass atrium rising like a Victorian greenhouse, dressed with hanging plants. From around five o’clock, a noise begins that many haven’t heard for a while – gradually rising in volume, it sounds a little like theatre stalls before curtain up: the sound of expectation. Box-fresh white trainers on lobby staff gold and black silk jackets in the library bar.
There’s a sense of occasion without the grandeur. Set the scene Just across the road from the neoclassical oomph of the Royal Opera House – and only a little more modest in scale with its etched Portland-stone façade – the NoMad is set in a former court.
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