Hazlitt's and Soho's Boutique Hideaways
No lifts, no lobby crowds, and rooms that feel borrowed rather than booked. Four of Soho's smallest hotels, and why each one suits a particular kind of evening.
01Small houses, big personality
Not every good Soho evening needs a grand lobby. A handful of the neighbourhood's best addresses are small on purpose, three joined townhouses, a former courtroom, a single narrow building on Moor Street, each trading scale for character in a way the bigger hotels rarely manage. What they share is fewer staff, fewer other guests, and a habit of treating an evening arrival as entirely unremarkable.
The four covered here sit within a ten minute walk of each other, all inside Soho proper or a short step onto its Carnaby edge, which makes swapping between them, or simply knowing all four exist, useful for anyone who books this part of London more than once.
02Hazlitt's on Frith Street
Hazlitt's occupies three Georgian houses joined into one on Frith Street, named for the essayist William Hazlitt, who lived and died in the building. There is no lift, on principle as much as practicality, and the staircases creak in a way the hotel has never seen fit to fix. Rooms are furnished with genuine antiques rather than reproductions, no two alike, and the whole building carries the settled, slightly worn charm of a house that has been lived in for two centuries rather than built for a brochure.
Rosa rates Hazlitt's among the quietest evenings Soho offers precisely because there is no bar or restaurant on site to draw a crowd through the lobby. Guests arrive, climb the stairs, and the building simply absorbs them. A drink, if one is wanted first, means stepping back out onto Frith Street rather than ringing down, which suits an evening that would rather begin somewhere with a little more life in it.
A small honesty bar sits by the reception, a shelf of bottles and a notepad rather than staff behind a counter, in keeping with a house that has never much wanted to feel staffed at all. Soho Square is two minutes away for anyone who wants a longer walk before arriving, and the surrounding streets stay quiet enough after dark that the last stretch to the door rarely feels like walking through a crowd.
03Broadwick Soho's rooftop
Broadwick Soho takes the opposite approach entirely, a newer, glossier building a few streets over with a rooftop garden and pool that turns an evening skyward rather than inward. Where Hazlitt's hides, Broadwick opens up, and the two make a useful pair of opposites when deciding what kind of evening a particular booking wants.
Michelle treats the rooftop bar as worth the trip on a clear evening, a drink up there before heading back down to the room doing more for the mood of an evening than either half would manage alone. Lower floors keep a calmer register, dim lighting and close corridors, once the rooftop crowd has been left behind.
04The Courthouse's old cells
On the Carnaby side of the neighbourhood, the Courthouse Hotel occupies the former Great Marlborough Street Magistrates' Court, and it wears the history openly. The building's old holding cells have been turned into intimate booths in the basement bar, a genuinely unusual place to open an evening with a drink before heading up to a room several floors removed from the building's stranger past.
The Carnaby end of Soho sits right outside the door, which makes the Courthouse a natural stop for an evening that already has Kingly Court or the surrounding streets on its route. The lobby upstairs keeps a calmer, more conventional register than the cells below, useful to know if the basement bar sounds like more theatre than the evening actually wants.
A fourth option sits a few streets east on Moor Street, the Z Hotel Soho, smaller again than any of the other three and built around a simple idea, comfortable rooms with none of the space given over to a lobby or a bar. It suits an evening with a fixed budget and no particular need for anything beyond the room itself, tucked so close to the edge of Chinatown that a late supper is barely a two minute walk away.
05What we confirm beforehand
Every one of these addresses is booked the same way any hotel visit through this house is booked: a first name to open the message, a full name and room number once you have checked in, and a short callback on WhatsApp before anyone travels across town.
A 25 percent deposit by bank transfer confirms a standard evening at any of the four. The balance is settled quietly on arrival, and the figure agreed at booking is the figure that stands, whichever of these small houses the evening happens to land in.
06Booking a boutique evening
A first hour opens from £250 across the portfolio, on the same published rates whichever of Hazlitt's, Broadwick, the Courthouse or the Z Hotel a booking names. Message the house on WhatsApp with the date, the address, and roughly what time the evening should begin.
Smaller buildings sometimes mean fewer rooms free on a given night, so a little extra notice helps when the plan is fixed on one particular address rather than open to whichever the diary suggests.
Questions from guests
No. The staircase is simply how the building has always worked, and staff think nothing of a guest arriving in the evening to climb it. There is no front desk drama to navigate either way.
It runs as a public bar, so a companion joining you there for a first drink draws no attention at all. Head up to the room whenever the evening is ready to continue.
Hazlitt's suits guests who want quiet from the first step. Broadwick suits an evening that wants a little more life first, and the Courthouse suits one built around a proper drink beforehand. Either books the same way, so the choice comes down to mood rather than practicality.