A bank that never meant to be modest
The Midland Bank built its headquarters on Poultry, a few steps from the Bank of England, to a design by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and it did not intend anyone to miss the point. The banking hall is vast, ringed with columns of green verdite and long walnut counters where customers once queued beneath one enormous ceiling. The building was finished in the late 1930s and spent the rest of the century doing exactly what it was built for.
In 2017 it reopened as The Ned, a hotel with a members' club attached, named after Lutyens himself, whom his friends called Ned. The conversion kept nearly everything worth keeping. The counters became bars and dining tables, the offices upstairs became guest rooms dressed in the manner of the 1920s and 1930s, and the strong room below ground was left very much a strong room.
The hall and its restaurants
The old banking hall holds several restaurants side by side, separated by nothing more than the counters and the columns, with a small stage near the middle where live music plays on many evenings. The line-up has shifted over the years. At the time of writing it includes Cecconi's for Italian cooking, Millie's Lounge for comfort at almost any hour and The Nickel Bar, a counter in the American style, among others. Check the current list before planning around a particular room, because names change faster than the columns do.
The effect is less a hotel restaurant than a small covered town square. You can drink in one room, eat in another and finish in a third without putting on a coat, which makes it unusually forgiving for a first dinner. If the conversation flows, you move to the next counter. If it needs help, the music does part of the work.
Down to the vault
Beneath the hall lies the part of the building people remember. The old vault is reached through a round steel door of enormous weight, and its walls are still lined with thousands of small numbered boxes that once held the customers' valuables. It now serves as a bar, low lit and strikingly quiet after the noise upstairs.
Like the rooftop, with its pool and its view of St Paul's, the vault is one of the spaces kept for members and hotel residents rather than walk-in diners. What a resident's guest may use is set by the house, and the rules have moved over the years, so ask at the front desk when you check in rather than discovering them at the door. If the vault is open to you, it makes an excellent last drink. If not, the hall remains the grandest room in the City.
Twenty minutes around Poultry
Arrive early and the streets around the hotel repay a short walk before dinner. Directly opposite stands No 1 Poultry, the striped postmodern building by James Stirling, with a garden and a restaurant on its roof looking back across the junction. Behind the Mansion House, St Stephen Walbrook hides one of Wren's finest domes inside a plain exterior, and a few steps further down Walbrook, the remains of a Roman temple to Mithras have been reconstructed beneath a modern office building, where the old ground level once lay.
None of it needs a guide or a ticket to appreciate from the street, and all of it is within five minutes of The Ned's door. A companion who likes buildings will point out more than you expected; one who does not will still enjoy the walk, because at dusk the City's stone looks better than it does at noon.
Thursday at full volume
On a weekday The Ned is the City's canteen, boardroom and bar at once. From about six the hall fills with people who have walked straight from their desks, and on a Thursday it can be loud enough that conversation happens across the width of a shared bottle. That noise is useful. Nobody notices one more well dressed guest arriving to meet someone, and a companion at your table reads as a colleague, a friend or a date, whichever you prefer.
For a weekday evening, reserve the table, give the desk the name it is booked under, and let her meet you there. Two hours at £500 fits a drink and a main course. Book the dinner date, four hours at £900, and there is room for everything, including a walk afterwards through the empty lanes towards St Paul's. The rates page sets out the other lengths.
Sunday, when the building exhales
At the weekend the City empties and The Ned slows with it. The hall stays open, but the suits have gone, brunch replaces the after work rush, and by Sunday evening the place feels like a great house whose owners are away. For a guest staying over, this is the kinder version: quicker service, easy tables and a lobby with hardly anyone crossing it.
Outside, the junction at Bank is close to silent. The Royal Exchange, the Mansion House and the windowless wall of the Bank of England stand floodlit with nobody looking at them, and ten minutes on foot takes in Wren churches that most weekday workers never notice. Our guide to Sunday nights in City hotels covers the rest of the Square Mile's quiet shift.
Company for the old bank
Samanta treats dinner at The Ned as an architecture tour with better food: she will pick where you sit and tell you what the columns are made of before the starters arrive. She prefers the four hour format and likes the arrangements confirmed by mid-afternoon on the day. Karolina, who walks the City with her eyes on cornices and stairwells, suits an evening that opens with a concert at the Barbican and ends on Poultry. Both are among the statuesque companions, both are at ease in formal rooms, and neither needs a room to be quiet.
The Ned sits within the Bank and Monument area, a minute from Bank station. For client evenings where she joins a larger table, see business evenings in the Square Mile; for a room visit after dinner, the booking page has the message to send.