What

...on earth is Adam Street? Adam Street is a private members' club made for work by day and play by night. It is designed to help the budding entrepreneur or frantic freelancer (or self-employed, jack-of-all-trades, genius or whatever) in their day-to-day working and social life. It comprises a bar, restaurant, library, meeting rooms and a dance floor.

Basically if you are independent and intelligent, with enough initiative and character to go it on your own, or with a small team, and especially if you find it hard to separate your personal and work life, then you probably need a bit of Adam Street in your life.

When

Robert Adam bought this part of the Thames bank in 1768 and by 1774 had finished the Adelphi development - a row of Georgian terraces built on a foundation of vaults. Instead of a pay rise the labourers were allowed an accompaniment of bag-pipes to ease their daily toil and Adam only narrowly avoided going bankrupt by selling his houses in a lottery. The development was briefly fashionable and boasted tenants such as the actor Garrick and Josiah Wedgwood as well as a rather seedy sex-therapist.

By Dickens's time the houses above the vaults had fallen into disrepair and it is almost certain that he used them as the inspiration for Fagan's thieves' den in Oliver Twist. So the smart, clean, non-rat-infested restaurant that you see today was once a hovel for thieves. We have, of course, appropriately honoured this provenance by naming our Club Cocktail the Oliver Twist - a very dry Gin Martini with an olive and a twist (geddit?).

In the 50s, the vaults became the home of The Green Room club and played host to the likes of Gielgud, Olivier and Richard Harris (who used to schlep over in his dressing gown and slippers from his digs in The Savoy to spin his thespian yarns to lesser mortals). Jeffery Barnard was almost certainly unwell down here at some point. By the late 90s the club had fallen on hard times and the Minters, who owned the freehold took over and with the help of Nathalie Bristow and Amy Gadney transformed the space into the club you see today.