Booking Office 1869: The Palm-Filled Ticket Hall at St Pancras

The first thing I saw was a palm tree. Then another one, taller than a double-decker bus, growing out of the floor of a Victorian railway ticket office.

It was the same Saturday I went up the clock tower upstairs. I walked into Booking Office 1869 around lunchtime without much of a plan, and spent most of my time there looking up.

Booking Office 1869 at St Pancras Station

Booking Office 1869 is the restaurant and bar inside the hotel at St Pancras. It fills the room where passengers once queued to buy their tickets, just off the station's arcade.

It serves breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, and drinks from midday until late. You don't need to be staying in the hotel or catching a train. Anyone can walk in off Euston Road or from the station.

The hotel itself has changed its name. It was the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel until 3 June 2025, when it became St. Pancras London, part of Marriott's Autograph Collection. Same building, same staircase, new sign.

The restaurant opened under its current name on 16 November 2021. Before that the room was already a bar and restaurant called the Booking Office, from the hotel's reopening in 2011.

Why Is There a Restaurant in St Pancras Station's Old Ticket Office?

St Pancras was built by the Midland Railway as its grand entrance to London. William Barlow's train shed opened on 1 October 1868. The restaurant takes its name from 1869, the year it gives for the station's completion.

Barlow's iron and glass roof was the largest single-span roof in the world when it was built. Walk out of the restaurant onto the upper concourse and you are standing right underneath it.

Sir George Gilbert Scott designed the Midland Grand Hotel in front of the shed, and its east wing opened on 5 May 1873. The ticket hall sat between the two worlds, half hotel, half railway.

The hotel closed in 1935 and the building became railway offices, renamed St Pancras Chambers. It came close to being demolished in the 1960s. In 1967 the hotel and the station were both listed Grade I.

After decades of decline, the building reopened as a hotel in 2011, with flats on the upper floors. I wrote about the famous grand staircase at St Pancras separately, and it's worth seeing on the same visit.

Eurostar moved its London terminal here on 14 November 2007. So the old ticket hall now sits a few steps from trains to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, which feels like a fitting second life.

The booking office stopped selling tickets long ago, but the room kept its bones. Red and cream brick arches, pointed windows, carved stone capitals, dark panelling. All of it is still there.

Who Designed Booking Office 1869?

The interior is the work of Hugo Toro, a Franco-Mexican designer based in Paris. It was his first commission in the UK. He worked on it with Harry Handelsman, the hotelier behind the building's redevelopment.

Toro designed almost everything you touch, from the chandeliers to the chairs and the fabrics. His idea was a Victorian winter garden inside a Victorian ticket hall. He has said he wanted a contemporary voice that stays connected to the past.

The palm trees are the part everyone remembers. They are around eight metres tall, planted in huge dark pots, and lit from below so the fronds glow against the timber roof.

A winter garden was a very Victorian idea. Grand hotels and houses built glass-roofed courts full of palms and ferns, so guests could feel warm and exotic in the middle of a grey London winter. Toro borrowed the mood without the glass.

The chandeliers are Toro's own design too. Tiered rings of brass, hung in a long line down the room, each one glowing like a stack of lanterns. They make the high ceiling feel warm rather than cavernous.

The bar runs for 22 metres, in antique brass, marble and walnut. The booths are covered in swirling patterned fabric by Pierre Frey, in deep reds and blues that pick up the colours of the brickwork.

What Should You Look For Inside Booking Office 1869?

Walk the whole length of the room before you sit down. Every corner is doing something different, and the photos I took from one end look nothing like the ones from the other.

Look at the windows first. They are tall, pointed and full of leaded glass, with little rose shapes in the tracery at the top. On a bright day they turn a pale, watery blue against all that amber light.

Then look for the clock. A plain white railway clock hangs high on the wall among the palms, which feels exactly right for a room built around timetables.

The booths are the best seats in the house. Some curve right round the base of the palm trees, so you sit in a padded ring with a trunk rising out of the middle.

Near the entrance there is a turquoise host stand wrapped in cane, with a globe lamp on top. It sits next to a heavy carved door and dark wooden panelling. Old and new, side by side, which is the whole point of the room.

At the far end, a Gothic window of blue leaded glass sits above an open doorway. Through it you glimpse the bright hotel beyond, and people wander in and out with bags and suitcases.

The colours are the thing I keep coming back to in my photos. Amber lamps, red brick, dark wood, gold rails, green fronds and that one flash of turquoise at the door. It shouldn't work, and somehow it does.

Do You Need to Book, and Is There a Dress Code?

You can book online for up to eight people. Groups of nine to 25 book by email, and anything bigger goes through the hotel's events team.

The dress code is smart-casual. The restaurant asks people not to come in slippers or flip-flops. It also doesn't allow laptops, which I rather like in a room this beautiful.

Breakfast runs from 7am to 11am, lunch from 12pm to 3pm and dinner from 5pm to 10pm. Drinks and snacks are served from midday until late, so an afternoon drink is the easiest way in.

When it opened in November 2021, the bar served espresso martinis on tap. The cocktail list leans on Victorian ingredients reworked for now, which suits the setting.

Booking Office 1869 in a Day at St Pancras

This is the easiest way to spend time inside a Grade I listed Victorian building without a ticket. The station, the hotel lobby and the bars are all open to the public.

Lunchtime was down here. The afternoon was high above it, in a private flat in the St Pancras clock tower. Two very different sides of the same building, a few floors apart.

The British Library is next door on Euston Road, free to enter, with its treasures gallery on the ground floor. It pairs well with a long lunch.

King's Cross is across the road, with Granary Square and Coal Drops Yard behind it. I've also been to the classic car boot sale at King's Cross, which is a fun way to fill a weekend afternoon here.

If you like railway buildings with a story, Waterloo Station has its own clock and its own grand arch. St Pancras is the more theatrical of the two.

Coming off the Eurostar is the best way to arrive. You walk out of the terminal and straight into Victorian London, with a palm-filled ticket hall waiting a few steps away.

Visiting Booking Office 1869: Practical Notes

📍 Where: St. Pancras London hotel, Euston Road, London NW1 2AR. The restaurant is in the station's old ticket hall, reached from the hotel or the station arcade.

⏰ Opening: Breakfast 7am to 11am, lunch 12pm to 3pm, dinner 5pm to 10pm. Drinks and snacks from 12pm until late.

📅 Open days: Every day.

🎫 Admission: Free to walk in and look. Book online for up to eight people, or email the restaurant for larger groups.

🚇 Getting there: King's Cross St Pancras, on the Victoria, Northern, Piccadilly, Metropolitan, Circle and Hammersmith & City lines.

☕ Food: Breakfast, lunch, dinner and cocktails. Smart-casual dress, no flip-flops, and no laptops.

⏳ How long: An hour for a drink, two for a proper meal. Add time to walk the whole room.

📷 Best time: Late morning or mid-afternoon on a bright day, when the windows glow blue against the lamps.

🗺️ Nearby: The grand staircase, the St Pancras clock tower, the British Library and King's Cross.

Have you had a drink under the palms at Booking Office 1869, or do you have a favourite corner of St Pancras I should go back for?

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All photos were taken by Ina/WithinLondon, unless stated otherwise.