There’s a moment, standing in a fourth-floor suite at the new Six Senses London, in the recently redeveloped The Whiteley, when a familiar neighbourhood snaps into unfamiliar focus. The high-rises in the distance sit beneath cement-grey clouds, the whole scene feels less gritty Bayswater, more... somewhere else entirely. Manhattan, perhaps. Or a particularly well-composed establishing shot in a film about urban transformation.
“They offered to paint them,” says the PR beside me, as we gaze at the back end of the flats that sit to the side of the new hotel, spa and members’ club. By complete coincidence, I happen to live in one of these flats, as does, in an even bigger coincidence, the PR – two doors down.
“They have a certain charm,” I offer, looking at the slightly shabby Dickensian brickwork, “but they also have a certain not-charm, don’t they?”
Whiteley’s Kitchen © Mark Anthony Fox
This is the essential tension at the heart of Six Senses London – a 109-room luxury hotel opening in March in what general manager Nick Yarnell cheerfully acknowledges is “still so overlooked” Bayswater. Not Mayfair. Not Knightsbridge. Not even Marylebone.
