Planning a Private Event in Westminster: What to Consider Before You Book
Private events tend to start with a date and a number. Useful, certainly. But neither tells you very much about the event you actually want to have.
Dinner for twelve around one table needs something different from drinks for eighty. A client lunch shouldn’t automatically feel corporate, and a birthday doesn’t need a blank events space simply because there are more of you than usual.
If you’re planning a private event in Westminster, these are the things worth working out before you choose the room.
Start with the occasion, not the floor plan
Before looking at capacities, think about how you want people to spend their time.
Are you sitting down together for lunch or dinner? Starting with drinks before moving to the table? Hosting clients? Marking a birthday? Bringing people together for a panel or presentation? A rough idea of the shape of the event makes it much easier to find a space that works around you, rather than fitting the occasion around a room.
At Old Queen Street, private events range from board lunches and client dinners to celebrations, birthdays and drinks receptions.
Explore Private Events at Old Queen Street
How many guests are you inviting?
You don’t need a final guest list before you enquire, but a realistic estimate helps.
At Old Queen Street there are three private rooms across the upper floors of our Georgian townhouse.
The Library
Our largest room, the Library seats up to 48 guests for lunch or dinner and can host up to 100 standing. Long tables work particularly well here, while the room can also be arranged for panels and business events.
The Club Bar
The Club Bar seats up to 10 or hosts up to 20 standing. Deep red walls, its own bar and a fireplace give it quite a different feel from a conventional private dining room. Use it on its own for something smaller, or alongside the Library for arrival drinks or a change of scene during a larger event.
The Mustard Room
For smaller gatherings, the Mustard Room seats up to 12 or accommodates 25 standing. It works particularly well when the point of the event is getting everyone around one table.
The rooms can be used individually or together, which gives you more freedom to move from drinks into dining as the event develops.
Seated dinner or drinks reception?
Guest numbers are only half of the capacity question. Forty people sitting down for dinner is a very different event from forty people having drinks and canapés.
If conversation around the table is the point, a seated lunch or dinner makes sense. For larger groups, or something where people need to move around and meet one another, a standing reception may work better.
And you don’t necessarily have to choose one or the other. Starting with drinks before moving through to dinner often gives an event a much more natural rhythm, particularly when there are different rooms to use.
Think about the food early
At Old Queen Street, food isn’t something added to an events package at the end. Executive Chef Elliot Spurdle, formerly of The Wolseley and The Delaunay, leads a kitchen shaped by the British seasons, and private events can be built around anything from breakfast and lunch to seated dinners, shared food and canapés.
The right format depends on what else is happening. A board lunch needs to keep moving. A private dinner can take its time. A drinks reception needs food that works while people are standing and talking.
It’s worth discussing drinks at the same time too, arrival drinks, wine with dinner and what happens afterwards are all part of how the event feels.
Location is part of the planning
If guests are travelling from different offices, coming to Westminster for a meeting or simply trying to get home afterwards, location matters.
Old Queen Street sits between Westminster Abbey and St James’s Park, with Parliament and Whitehall close by. You’re firmly in central London, but once you’re upstairs in the house it feels rather removed from the rush outside.
For corporate events in particular, that combination is useful: easy to get to, without feeling as though the event is taking place in another office.
Why choose a private room rather than a conventional event space?
Sometimes a blank room is exactly what you need.
Sometimes it means spending rather a lot of time, money and energy making a room feel like somewhere you would actually like to be.
Old Queen Street is already a Georgian townhouse with bookshelves, fireplaces, artwork and rooms with their own character. There are floorboards reclaimed from Churchill’s Old War Office and Martin Parr photographs on the walls. Downstairs, the restaurant is still getting on with being a restaurant.
For smaller events especially, that makes a difference. It feels less like hiring an event space and more like having a part of the house to yourselves.
Planning an event at Old Queen Street?
If you’re putting together a private lunch, dinner, business event, drinks reception or celebration in Westminster, take a look through the rooms and brochure first.
Then send us the date, approximate numbers and what you have in mind.
We’ll help with the rest.