This is a club, which means that the bar may be only open to members.
The club bar serves several keg beers, and its range of bottled beers includes Young's London (or Kew) Gold bottle conditioned and brewed by Marston's at the Eagle Brewery Bedford.
The gentlemen's washroom facilities have to be the most magnificent in London!
The upper (bedroom) and lower floors were sold off to the Royal Horseguards Hotel next door in the early 1980s following a growing financial crisis and long-term decline. The proceeds funded a substantial and impressive restoration of the main club rooms - library, bar and dining room, function rooms, and more. Members get discounted accommodation rates at the hotel (separate entrance).
Past members have included such political luminaries as Asquith, Churchill, Lloyd Gerge & Ramsay Macdonald, plus literary figures such as G.B.Shaw, H.G.Wells, Bram Stoker of Dracula fame, and Dylan Thomas.
Membership is nowadays wider than just the Liberal party though members are required not to undertake anti-Liberal political activity. The NLC was the first London club to admit women as full members.
The dining room and its terrace overlook the Thames and of a sunny summer's evening this is a very pleasant place in which to drink and dine.
The club is closed at weekends except for private hire. It is often in fact then very busy, the ornate 19th-century interior attracting film and TV period dramas such as Downton Abbey and The Crown.
Historic Interest
Grade II* listed, Historic England ref 1066072. The club was founded in 1882 with Gladstone as its first President. The clubhouse was built to designs by Alfred Waterhouse 1884-1887. At that time it was the largest clubhouse ever built and also the first to be lit be electricity and the first building in the capital to incorporate a lift. There is lavish use of patterned faience in the clubrooms. The main staircase was destroyed by an enemy bomb in May 1941 but was beautifully reconstructed in 1950-51 by Clyde Young and Engle as a marble cantilevered oval staircase. The club's wine cellar is a recycled trench originally dug in 1865 for the world's first pneumatic tube railway, quickly abandoned.
National Liberal Club, London