Imperial London Hotels has a rich history spanning almost 200 years, beginning in 1815 when Henry Walduck was granted a license to open a Catering Establishment in Gravesend, which quickly began to flourish.

His son, Henry Thomas Walduck, moved to London in the early 1830s. He purchased a hotel in Warwick Court which was sold in 1863 by his son, Henry Walduck Jnr, who moved to Bloomsbury and purchased the lease of the old Bedford Hotel for £290 at an annual rent of £90.

At the time, this was the only hotel permitted on the Duke of Bedford's Bloomsbury estates. Candles were lit in the windows of empty rooms, their warm light began to invite new guests inside. 

Harold Walduck, the son of Thomas Henry Walduck Jnr, built and reconstructed more than 10 hotels in the area, sleeping over 3500 guests.

In 1904, Harold Walduck invited the famous architect Charles Fitzroy Doll to design the original Imperial Hotel in order to meet the excess guest demand at Bedford Hotel. Fitzroy Doll was an English architect of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, who specialised in designing hotels in a Neo-Gothic style.

In 1910, an unassuming block of flats adjacent to Imperial Hotel was purchased and converted into a stylish hotel with 150 rooms. This was given the name 'Premier Hotel', today known as President Hotel.

Shortly following this came the opening of the National Hotel in 1920 and the Royal Hotel in 1928. Both would later merge together to become Royal National Hotel.

The popular Victorian Turkish Baths were constructed as part of a 1913 extension to Imperial Hotel. An early photograph reveals its once opulent interior, with heavily decorated walls, ceilings and a mosaic floor. Not only were they open 'day and night', but there was a wide range of other treatments available including Russian vapour, electric light and ultraviolet ray baths.

The baths were demolished, with the rest of the hotel, in 1966. But the statues were rescued and can still be spotted lining the Imperial Hotel courtyard along with a tiled mosaic sign in the pavement, towards the corner of President Hotel.

Harold Walduck's sons Norman and Stanley continued to rebuild and construct the hotels after returning from serving their country in World War II. They negotiated the lease on County Hotel and built Tavistock Hotel in 1951 - London's first post war hotel.

From 1924 until 1939, writers Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived on the top two floors of Number 52 Tavistock Square, which is now the site of the Tavistock Hotel. Virginia Woolf lived here longer than in any other of her Bloomsbury homes, and wrote most of her novels here. You can now see a famous blue plaque outside the entrance to the Tavistock Hotel commemorating the famous writer.

The rebuilding of Premier Hotel followed in 1960. It offered guests 449 rooms, with 'bathroom and shower, large screen TV, multichannel stereophonic sound radio, telephone, international razor socket, weighing scales, and many other modern amenities'.

When the new hotel reopened as President, it soon became home to the famous English rock band 'the Beatles' when they came down from Liverpool to London during the summer of 1963.

During the 1960s Richard, Thomas and Stephen Walduck joined the company, taking over from their fathers.

Bedford Hotel was rebuilt in 1964, followed by Imperial Hotel shortly after in 1970. Royal National was finally completed in 1998 which was and still is, London's largest hotel with over 1630 rooms.

The Imperial London Family of Hotels has since been joined by the sons and daughters of Richard, Thomas and Stephen Walduck, continuing the long family tradition of welcoming everyone to the city centre.

Our boutique Morton Hotel was the newest addition to the family, which opened in 2013.