Dover Street, W1S: an arrival nobody has to explain

A short street with a great many entrances

The eastern side is largely offices and galleries at ground level with flats above. The western side carries the members' doors, the private rooms and the restaurants that keep their frontage deliberately small. Stafford Street crosses halfway down and gives onto Old Bond Street. Hay Hill runs off the top towards Berkeley Square.

What all this means practically is that Dover Street has a great many entrances and very little pavement traffic after seven. Cars stop here constantly and nobody looks up. For an arrival that goes entirely unremarked, this is the best street in W1 and several of our regular guests chose their hotel on that basis.

It also has a habit of staying open. The rooms on the western side tend to run later than the ones on Albemarle Street, and an evening that begins at eight here can very comfortably still be going at one.

How this house handles an arrival

Every booking is settled before anybody moves. Delphine confirms in writing which companion is coming, at what minute, to which door, and how you would like her to present herself when she gets there: by your name at a desk, or met in the hall, or simply through a door left on the latch. Those are three different evenings and the difference is decided in advance, not in a doorway.

She then tells your companion the same three things. Nothing is left for the two of you to improvise while a porter watches. This is the whole of what this house means by composure, and it is why the same guests write back rather than shopping around.

The fee is settled with your companion in person when she arrives, at the figure already written into your thread, and there is no further conversation about it at any point in the evening.

Rooms at both ends of the street

A hotel stands one street east at W1S 4BP, with entrances on both Albemarle Street and Dover Street, which makes it the most practical address on this page. W1J 9BR is at the foot of the street across Piccadilly. W1J 8LT is two minutes west on Stratton Street. W1J 7BH occupies a Georgian terrace on Half Moon Street, four minutes south west.

There is no understanding of any kind between this house and a hotel, on this street or off it. A companion arrives as your guest and nothing about her suggests any other arrangement, because there is none.

A good many Dover Street bookings are to flats above the galleries, or to company apartments kept by firms with offices on the street. Delphine takes the number, the floor and the name on the bell. She does not ask whose flat it is.

One minute to three lines

Green Park station sits about 1 minute from the bottom of the street, carrying the Jubilee, Piccadilly and Victoria lines, which is as well connected as a W1 address gets. Piccadilly Circus is roughly 7 minutes east on the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines, and Bond Street some 9 minutes north.

Your companion comes by car and stops where you tell her to. W1S is central, so her travel sits inside the figure and nothing is added. An address beyond the second fare zone brings a taxi fare both ways, quoted as one sum before you agree, and nothing is ever added once an evening has begun.

When plans change, three hours of notice or more costs you nothing. From two hours out, half of what was agreed stands, an evening nobody appears for carries the whole of it, and fifteen minutes of grace sit on the start before Delphine resets the hour rather than let a booking run late.

The companion this street belongs to

Molly lives six minutes away in Soho and treats Dover Street as her own. She likes to be here early rather than late, in a small striped room over a coffee worth sitting with, on the grounds that the first hour of an evening is wasted if it is spent deciding anything.

Jasmin and Tina are on the next street over, Nancy and Thea three minutes north at Berkeley Square, and Danielle and Roxi a minute south at Green Park. Every other name in the Salon attends W1S at the same tariff.

Immediately either side

East, running the whole length of the block, the gallery row of Albemarle Street is the quieter twin of this one. North, up Hay Hill, Berkeley Square is three minutes under the trees. North east, the W1S blocks by Bond Street carry the salerooms. South, across Piccadilly, the Green Park corner holds the park hotels and the walk into St James's.