Around Bond Street, W1S: an afternoon appointment kept to the minute

Old Bond Street, New Bond Street, and what lies behind them

The street is really two. New Bond Street runs north towards Oxford Street, wider and busier, with Sotheby's about halfway along it and a viewing on most weeks of the year. Old Bond Street continues south to Piccadilly, shorter and grander, the jewellers thickest at that end. Between them the postcode is W1S almost throughout.

Behind the shopfronts the quarter is more interesting than the windows suggest. Burlington Gardens crosses at the southern end. The Royal Arcade and the Burlington Arcade still shut their gates at night with beadles on the door. Savile Row runs parallel one block east, and Conduit Street links the two across the top.

All of which makes this a district with a rhythm rather than a mood. Rooms fill in the middle of the day and empty at six, and an afternoon here has more going on in it than most London evenings.

An appointment kept to the minute

The bookings Delphine takes from W1S are frequently short and precise. Two hours at £500 between a morning meeting and a flight. Ninety minutes at £400 while a sale room is still setting up. What every one of them has in common is that the hour is exact, and this house treats an exact hour as the whole of the promise.

That means the confirmation names the minute and the door, not the half hour and the general vicinity. It means Delphine tells you who is coming rather than sending whoever is nearest. And it means that if anything at all delays your companion, you are told at once, not discovered at the desk.

Should an afternoon turn into an evening, and it frequently does here, the booking is rewritten at the next length rather than extended informally. Two hours at £500 becomes three at £700, your companion is given the corrected figure, and the evening carries on without a conversation about money in the middle of it.

Where guests are staying in W1S

Conduit Street, W1S 2YF, holds the hotel physically closest to the middle of the street and the one written to us most often here. W1S 4BP sits a short walk south with the tea room that fills every afternoon. W1K 4HR is five minutes north. W1K 6TF faces Brown Hart Gardens behind Grosvenor Square and is quieter than any of them. W1B 4DY closes the run at the Regent Street end.

This house holds no arrangement with those hotels or any others, and asks for none. Your companion arrives as your guest and nothing about the arrival needs managing.

A fair number of W1S bookings are not hotels at all but offices with a flat above them, or a company apartment kept for visiting staff. Delphine takes the street, the number, the floor, the name on the bell, and asks nothing further about what the building is for.

Two minutes to three lines

Bond Street station lies about 2 minutes from the top of the street, with the Central and Jubilee lines and the Elizabeth line beneath it, which is the reason so many guests arrive here straight from Heathrow or from the east of the city without changing. Oxford Circus is roughly 5 minutes north, on the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines. Green Park is some 7 minutes south at the Piccadilly end.

Your companion comes by car regardless and is set down where you ask. W1S is as central as an address gets, so her travel is inside the fee with nothing added. Only an address past the second fare zone brings a taxi fare both ways, quoted to you as a single figure before anything is confirmed.

The fee goes directly to your companion when she arrives, the figure exactly as Delphine wrote it, and nothing is added later.

Two who treat this street as a workplace

Karolina regards New Bond Street as her own ground and an evening viewing at Sotheby's as the ideal beginning to a night out; she reads every label and defends her opinions over dinner afterwards. Rosa is ten minutes north in Marylebone and likes a bright, busy room a minute from the top of Old Bond Street, then the arcades on the way back.

Samanta is a Conduit Street regular with a serious view about Savile Row windows, and Angelika is five minutes west on Mount Street. Every other name in the Salon attends this postcode at the same figures.

One street over in each direction

West past Grosvenor Square, the Mayfair blocks take over and the shopfronts give way to flats. South, the galleries of Albemarle Street run down to Piccadilly, with the members' doors of Dover Street immediately beside them. South west, Berkeley Square is four minutes on foot through Bruton Street. Oxford Street closes the northern end, which is the boundary where this house stops writing and starts recommending a taxi.