Thanet Hotel

The Thanet Hotel occupies a townhouse at 8 Bedford Place built in 1802-03 on the former grounds of Southampton House. The building passed through a succession of residents, including barrister Serjeant Eric Parker and East India merchant Thomas Stooks, before Lydia Collis, stepdaughter of a retired Royal Navy commander, began letting rooms there in the late nineteenth century, starting its conversion into a lodging house. It traded as the Delmonico Private Hotel from 1925 before becoming the Thanet Hotel around 1940, the name it still carries. Today it operates as a small, independently run bed and breakfast with sixteen en-suite rooms, several retaining original fireplaces and other period features, on a quiet residential street a short walk from the British Museum and Russell Square. It is advertised as family-run and marketed as a budget option among Bloomsbury's cluster of small townhouse hotels.