Front doors on a Georgian terrace: the small hotels of Marylebone

Brick terraces, garden squares and two old estates

Most of Marylebone was built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as rows of tall brick houses, four or five storeys each, laid out around garden squares: Portman, Manchester, Bryanston, Montagu, Dorset. Two great landed estates, the Portman and the Howard de Walden, still own much of the district, which is one reason its streets have kept their shape while so much of the West End was rebuilt around them.

Over two centuries those houses became doctors' rooms, embassies, offices and flats. A handful became hotels. They are the least known and most rewarding places to stay north of Oxford Street: a front door on a residential street, a hallway instead of a lobby, a staircase that still has its original curve. Staying in one feels less like checking in than being lent somebody's house for the week.

Small house, different rules

A grand hotel protects your privacy with numbers. So many people cross its lobby that nobody is noticed. A townhouse hotel does it the other way round: there are so few guests that the staff see every arrival, and the whole culture of the house rests on seeing without remarking. The receptionist knows your name by the second morning and would not dream of asking who came to dinner.

That changes the texture of a visit. There is no crowd to slip through and no need for one. Your companion rings, or walks in, is greeted as your guest and shown up, and the evening begins in a room that looks like a room in a house rather than a hotel. Many of these places have a drawing room or a small bar on the ground floor, the natural spot for a first drink before anything else happens.

Three front doors worth knowing

Dorset Square Hotel fills a row of Regency houses facing the garden where, in 1787, Thomas Lord opened his first cricket ground, long before the club settled in St John's Wood. The rooms look over the garden in the middle of the square, private to its residents, and Marylebone station and Baker Street are each a few minutes away on foot. It feels the quietest of the three and suits an early start.

The Zetter Townhouse on Seymour Street is dressed as the home of an eccentric imaginary relative, every surface crowded with pictures, clocks and oddities, with a bar downstairs that makes the case for staying in. It is the closest of the three to the shops: the western end of Oxford Street and Marble Arch are about five minutes south. Nobody who stays there forgets it.

Durrants, on George Street behind the Wallace Collection, is the veteran of the neighbourhood: panelled, courteous, entirely without gimmicks. It has a field note of its own, because it deserves one.

Rented terraces and serviced flats

Many visitors to Marylebone skip the hotel altogether and rent a flat inside one of these terraces, by the week or the month. For a visit, a flat works much like a hotel with one difference: there is nobody at a front desk, so the details that a receptionist would handle become yours to share.

When you message Clementine, give the street and the door number, the flat number or floor, and the buzzer name if it differs from your own. She confirms the address once, in writing, in place of the hotel room check. If the building has a porter, say so; if the front door locks at night and the entryphone is unreliable, plan to meet your companion at the street door yourself. It takes a minute and removes the only awkward moment an evening in a flat can have.

Calling at a small hotel after dark

Townhouse hotels keep townhouse habits. Some lock the street door late in the evening and answer a bell; some hand over to a single night porter; a few leave a skeleton desk from midnight. None of this is a problem, but it is worth knowing before you set an arrival time for eleven.

Ask at check-in how visitors are received after dark, and pass the answer on when you book. Lifts in converted houses can be small and slow, and the stairs are often the quicker route to the second floor. Rooms at the back of a terrace look over gardens and mews and are almost silent at night, a strong argument for asking for one when you reserve.

Price tags for a slower evening

Small hotels reward slower bookings. A drink in the drawing room and conversation upstairs fits comfortably into two hours for £500, and three hours for £700 allows a walk to dinner on the High Street and back. For a night in, the overnight booking runs ten hours for £1,800 and ends with breakfast in a dining room that feels like a friend's kitchen. Every other rung is on the rates page, with the same figures whichever house you choose.

In the window for a townhouse evening

Rosa and Liana both live in Marylebone, which makes them the natural first call for a townhouse evening: Rosa brings a paper bag of cheese from Moxon Street, Liana a slim novel she thinks you ought to read. Patricia likes a slow start in front of three paintings in the Wallace Collection, a few streets away, and Molly will happily begin late in the bar at The Zetter Townhouse. Patricia belongs to our auburn and red group, and Rosa and Molly are both in the curvaceous window.

Send the house, the hour and the length, and Clementine replies with a name and an arrival time. How the single check works is set out on the booking page.