London, United Kingdom

11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse

Price per night from$628.99

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (GBP475.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse Photos

Style

Sloane Ranger

Setting

The village borough

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Occupying a quintet of townhouses, 11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse has an aristocrat’s body and a bon viveur’s spirit. Built in the 19th century by Lord Chelsea, the hotel’s suites and apartments deliver old-world splendour and red-brick grandeur in spades. A former members’ club, the hotel has long been a lady of leisure – champagne-tinged teas are held each afternoon — but its contemporary British restaurant and seductive cocktail den make it equally fit for modern-minded guests.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A full English breakfast for two; those staying in suites also get a half bottle of Laurent Perrier and a free extra bed; those staying in an apartment get a half bottle of Laurent Perrier

Facilities

Photos 11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse facilities

Need to know

Rooms

62, including 25 suites and six apartments.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

More details

Rates usually exclude breakfast. Choose from Continental classics like homemade pastries (£4) and bircher muesli (£6), or go hot with dishes like the Full English (£20), Croissant Florentine (£12) or grilled kippers (£10).

Also

There are steps at the entrance and no adapted rooms, making the hotel unsuitable for wheelchair users.

At the hotel

Gym, free WiFi throughout, laundry. In rooms: flatscreen TV, Nespresso coffee machine, free bottled water, Ormonde Jayne bath products.

Our favourite rooms

If it’s indulgence you’re after, the sumptuous Sloane Suite will deliver it in gilt-edged spades. Furnished with fine antiques and decorated in a regal trio of gold, cream and black, this two-room suite has the best views of leafy Cadogan Gardens, on show in grand proportions thanks to a vast bay window in the living room. The bedroom is bathed in light thanks to a second set of floor-to-ceiling windows, and has an ornate four-poster bed with a tasselled canopy.

Packing tips

A copy of the 1982 satirical classic, The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook.

Also

The hotel has several rooms that are perfect for private dinners and get togethers, the most dramatic of which is the Mirror Room, clad almost entirely in polished glass.

Children

All ages are welcome. A cot (free) can be added to any room; an extra bed is free in Chelsea Junior Suites or Garden Suites, or £75 a night in Chelsea King rooms. Babysitting is available.

Food and Drink

Photos 11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse food and drink

Top Table

If it’s just the two of you, try the conservatory. If you’re in a party, book a bacchanalian private dinner in the Wine Room.

Dress Code

Go for a jet-black ensemble for a striking contrast with the pale decor.

Hotel restaurant

The most modern space in the hotel, Han’s Bar & Grill marks a departure from the heritage look, dressed with exposed brick, green leather banquettes and square, marble-topped tables. There are several different rooms, each with their own distinct style, including an elegant wine room (where some of the hotel’s 180-bottle collection is stored), and a light-flooded conservatory, in which potted greenery dangles from the glass roof. Chef Adam England has devised an all-day menu that champions the best British produce of the season, including hearty grill items like monkfish and English sirloin.

Hotel bar

Laced with gold paint, dark woods and cognac leather, the Chelsea Bar is the hotel’s louche yet elegant drinking den. Thick curtains emblazoned with oak leaves can be drawn over the mullioned windows, and the barmen will pour until the last guest leaves. Cocktails play a feature role, but there’s also an extensive wine list for guests with grape expectations. There’s a second bar in Han’s, a more modern, industrial-style affair with exposed ducting and jet-black lamps.

Last orders

Breakfast is served from 7am to 11.30am; the all-day menu is available until 10.30pm. The Chelsea Bar can stay open round the clock if there’s enough demand.

Room service

A wide selection of the menu at Han’s is available as room service, including salads, club sandwiches, burgers and steaks.

Location

Photos 11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse location
Address
11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse
11 Cadogan Gardens
London
SW3 2RJ
United Kingdom

The hotel is across the road from Cadogan Gardens, a leafy park square in the heart of Chelsea.

Planes

Touch down at London Heathrow for the quickest routes into the city. The Heathrow Express will whisk you to Paddington in 15 minutes; a car or taxi will take about 45 minutes if the traffic plays nicely. The hotel can arrange private transfers for £95 each way (but prices can be cheaper when booked well in advance).

Trains

All of London’s major stations are within easy reach. The most convenient is Victoria, where you’ll be able to hop straight onto the District or Circle line, riding one stop to Sloane Square, a short stroll from the hotel.

Automobiles

You won’t need a car if you’re staying at 11 Cadogan Gardens. With Sloane Square so nearby, the Tube is the fastest way to get around, and taxis are plentiful after dark.

Worth getting out of bed for

A longtime home-from-home for aristocrats and bon vivants, 11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse is no stranger to lives of leisure. In truly British style, the afternoon tea is one of the day’s highlights, with specialty teas and champagne doing the rounds in the cosy refinement of the drawing room (or Han’s bar, if bottle-green leather and milky marble are more your cup of tea). In the summer, the hotel’s walled terrace becomes the perfect Pimm’s garden, particularly during Wimbledon, which is shown on a big screen. After dark, the Chelsea Bar becomes the hotel’s social heart, where cocktails are served till late in a dusky room with cognac-leather armchairs and dark-wood parquet.

Opposite the hotel are the famous Cadogan Gardens, which you can access during your stay – the lawn makes a fine spot to laze with a book on a summer’s day. But unlike most hotels, what’s out back is equally enticing. After a consultation with local residents, the mews that line Pavilion Road were refurbished and occupied by a host of handpicked businesses, including a butcher, artisanal bakery, barbershop, cheese monger and wine merchant, each housed in a redbrick mews house with a steep gabled roof. The local area is rich in independent boutiques selling everything from exotic flowers to handmade hats, but for a food-focused experience, try the Farmers’ Market just off the King’s Road, where you can sample half a dozen Maldon oysters before browsing the surrounding shops. Occupying the Grade II-listed Duke Of York’s Headquarters, the Saatchi Gallery is famous for its star-studded and oft provocative exhibitions of contemporary art. If you’re looking to escape the crowds for an hour, take refuge in the Chelsea Physic Garden, which was established in 1673 as a place to grow medicinal plants.

Local restaurants

Take a stroll along the King’s Road on a Saturday or Sunday morning, and you could easily believe that Chelsea was where brunch was invented. With its sunny terrace and forest of potted plants, the Ivy Chelsea Garden is a mainstay on the scene, and has one of the biggest brunch menus in the borough. For something a little different, try Peruvian ceviche specialist Chicama, where last night’s excess will be absolved by cured salmon with avocado and eggs, or sweetcorn pancakes topped with crab and ají amarillo hollandaise. For a casual lunch, book a table at La Mia Mamma, where traditional dishes are cooked by authentically Italian ‘mammas’. The menu changes every three months, focusing on the cuisine of a particular region each time. Expect pasta that’s been handmade that morning, succulent grill items and the familial service that Italy is famous for. British cuisine gets a creative makeover at Elystan Street, helmed by Michelin-starred chef Philip Howard, who forged his career under culinary heavyweights like Marco Pierre White and Simon Hopkinson. The dishes are lighter and fresher than many British fine-dining options, and the wine list is full of winning bottles from established and up-and-coming wineries.

Reviews

Photos 11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse reviews
Chris Wallace

Anonymous review

By Chris Wallace, Gentlemanly jetsetter

At the quiet Northwestern end of a private square in Belgravia, 11 Cadogan Gardens & the Chelsea Townhouse can give a guest there the feeling of being a gentleman detective in one of Charles Finch’s books or Poirot on staycation. 

This red-and-white brick Victorian townhouse (or, well, four linked townhouses), built by Lord Chelsea himself in the late 1800s, functioned even in the 19th century as a bed and breakfast for traveling aristocrats; the wonderfully creaky spiral staircases of the sheathed as they are in portraits of familiarly dusty old so-and-sos whose eyes you half expect to follow you on your ascent, wrap around a hanging lantern just as they would in, oh, Harry Potter or something. 

The rooms, with their huge bay windows and massive sculpted wood beds, too, can convince you that your London pied-a-terre is a particular sort of paradise (the little parquet floor gym, lighted by a south-facing stained glass window is bliss on top of bliss). But the best part of the hotel here is the incredibly attentive and discreet staff – present and attentive enough to seem like friends after only a weekend, but aware and discreet enough to vanish when you are hoping for privacy.

If you are as lucky as we were to check in on a gloriously sunny late spring weekend, take a picnic of treats collected from the gourmet shops on Pavilion Road and slip into the gated garden itself for a leisurely late morning, or afternoon into evening, surrounded by the bobbing blooms and red and white brick porches of a perfect Victorian garden. 

After our picnics (plural, we had one every day of our stay), we’d wander around the streets of Chelsea – for bottarga pasta at Oliveto’s, say, or on a pilgrimage to visit the homes of the two greatest fictional spies of all time, James Bond and George Smiley (who would’ve lived across the street from one another!) – before returning for a twilight trip to the hotel’s Chelsea Bar for a negroni or three. The restaurant, Hans’s Bar and Grill has a sort of ideal all-day menu with things like arancini and grilled scallops to fend off any puckish languor during your stay.

When the days are sunny and mild in London, as they were during our visit, it is almost impossible to stay inside – there is some sort of gravitational pull involved, I am convinced. And still it was a bit of a trial to pull myself out of the massive carved wood ebony bed in my Chelsea HQ. 

When I think about returning to the city, it is to this bed, and this room, attended by this staff, that I imagine returning. 

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Price per night from $628.99

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