Venue Focus
Capital venue ideas
Olivia Powell looks at a few of the striking venues London has to offer
Royal Horticultural Halls:
The Royal Horticultural Halls
were opened by King Edward VII
in 1904.
The Lindley Hall has 11,000m
of space and five archways. The
Lawrence Hall can accommodate
900 guests for dinner, and 1,500
for a reception. Both offer elegant
Edwardian features, including a
14-foot-high glazed vaulted ceiling
in the Lindley Hall.
One of the events the venue is
particularly proud of hosting is
the annual Great Ormond Street
Hospital Charity Day Ball for
children, which has been held at
the halls for the past few years.
The venue was also used to host
meetings for the suffragettes.
Trinity House:
Trinity House was constructed between
1794 and 1796, and is owned by the
Corporation of Trinity House, a maritime
charity. As well as being a venue, it is
also the working home of the General
Lighthouse Authority.
The venue was a founding member of
UVL (Unique Venues of London) which
recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.
In the early 1990’s, the decision was
made to allow private events in order
to fund the upkeep of the building, and
since then it has been used as a venue.
It has many historical artefacts,
including the second-largest single-
loom carpet in the UK.
54 — January
Hawker House:
Previously an abandoned
warehouse space, Hawker House
in Rotherhithe opened in 2015 as
a consumer street food market.
After noticing a gap in the market
for ‘alternative’ venues, Street
Feast (the venue’s operator) took
the decision to launch the venue
in 2016.
Hawker House keeps close to
its street market roots whilst
also hosting a number of events
by using multiple entrances,
moveable partition walls and
breakout areas in addition to
festival-themed décor.
The venue is split between the
‘Big Room’ which accommodates
between 3-400 guests for sit-down
gala dinners depending on seating
format and 550 for conferences;
and the ‘Other Room’, styled as
a pre-awards reception area. In
addition, there are three other
breakout areas on a mezzanine
level, and a tiki-themed outdoor
area open during the summer
months called the ‘Land of
Bamboo’.