page_title: Criterion Restaurant
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Criterion Restaurant / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Kate Frye diary
context_page_description: The Criterion Restaurant is an opulent restaurant complex facing Piccadilly Circus in the heart of London. It was built by architect Thomas Verity in Neo-Byzantine style for the partnership Spiers and Pond, which opened it in 1873. Apart from fine dining facilities it has a bar. It is a Grade II* listed building and is in the Top 10 most historic and oldest restaurants in the world.
  In the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson is told of his prospective roommate after he meets a friend at the Criterion.
context_section_description: In 1870 the building agreement for Nos. 219–221 (consec.) Piccadilly and Nos. 8–9 Jermyn Street was purchased by Messrs. Spiers and Pond, a firm of wine merchants and caterers, who held a limited architectural competition for designs for a large restaurant and tavern with ancillary public rooms. The competition was won by architect Thomas Verity. Building work began in the summer of 1871, and was completed in 1873 at a total cost of over £80,000 (£8 million adjusted for inflation). The contractors included Messrs. Hill, Keddell and Waldram and Messrs. George Smith and Company.
  It was designed by Thomas Verity as a five-level complex with its Marble Hall and Long Bar on the ground floor; dining rooms on the first and second floors; a ballroom on the third floor and a theatre in the basement. It also had an American Bar, which some view as the first American-style cocktail bar in London. The interiors of the new building were extensively decorated with ornamental tile-work, one of the first examples of the use of this material on such a scale following its successful use in the recently completed refreshment rooms at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum).
  The restaurant was opened on 17 November 1873. The new venture proved very profitable within a short time. The East Room was popular with ladies who had come to London's West End to shop.
   
  The restaurant was a setting for many events and celebrations such as at the Royal College of Science's First Annual Dinner. The Chairman that night was H. G. Wells, the pioneer of science fiction. H. G. Wells was a regular diner at the restaurant. 
  The Criterion was frequently used for luncheon clubs in the early 1920s. Members met for lunch every Thursday at 1pm and the price of lunch was 4s-6d. The first recorded lunch meeting was held on 6 December 1923. The speaker was a member, Miss Joyce Partridge, FRCS, surgeon and lecturer on anatomy. The list of guest speakers was impressive and varied, including Edgar Wallace, Sir Hugh Walpole, G. K. Chesterton and Bertrand Russell.
  Suffragettes at the Criterion
  In April 1909 the Criterion Restaurant, renowned for its afternoon tea and in particular high standard of ladies cloakrooms, was a setting for many afternoon tea meetings organised and held by the WSPU and Christabel Pankhurst as a part of Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
  Kate Frye, who was a member of the Actresses' Franchise League, would frequently attend and make diary entries on some of those Criterion meetings.
  David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill
  In 1919, the Coalition government of David Lloyd George appeared to be in a position of overwhelming strength and public support. Lloyd George's personal reputation was known to be as the "man who won the war". Yet the government faced serious problems notably in the economy and with industrial unrest. More problematic was the stability of the Coalition as a governing platform. Lloyd George was aware that a purely personal ascendancy was unlikely to be enough for turning the Coalition into a long term political force. The only ways in which the wartime spirit of national unity could be perpetuated was by appealing to the ‘higher unity’ of coalition, with the creation of a single ‘fused’ party to reflect the ‘fusion’ taking place at parliamentary and programme level. Between July 1919 and March 1920 Lloyd George and his associates worked hard to bring the fusion project to fruition. Winston Churchill set the tone on 15 July with a speech to the New Members’ Group at the Criterion Restaurant in London.
caption: Kate Frye diary
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