Zetter Townhouse Hotel, Clerkenwell, London

There's a spring in my step. Clerkenwell is my favourite part of London. I used to live here. The name comes from the Clerks' Well (in Farringdon Road), cobblestones are still in evidence, and office workers hurry beneath St John's Gate, once the entrance to the Priory of the Knights of St John.

Zetter Townhouse
49-50 St John's Square, Clerkenwell, London
EC1V 4JJ
020-7324 4567
thezettertownhouse.com


From £185 room only

The 13-room Zetter Townhouse on St John's Square is a new project from Mark Sainsbury and Michael Benyan, who opened the original Zetter hotel just across the square in 2004. I may have stayed there once, can't remember – but its restaurant has always been a place to see and be seen.

This area is quiet at weekends. You can walk to Spitalfields or the British Museum, or catch a bus to Columbia Road flower market. Even nightclubbing can be done on foot. Ditto restaurants – Moro, St John, Club Gascon, more recently Bruno Loubet at the Zetter and the Modern Pantry, next door, and the paint is still wet at a new Bistro du Vin on St John Street.

The light-blue front door leads straight into the cocktail lounge, where designer Russell Sage has taken no prisoners. Miss Havisham meets Ms Westwood. Over a bottle of absinthe. One long room is bar (which does good snacks such as courgette fritters, roast head of garlic, charcuterie), hotel lounge and breakfast room. Framed needlepoint, velvet couches, polished oak, a stag's head, stuffed birds in a Victorian glass case, and – a triumph of taxidermy this – a parasol-wielding cat in a crinoline. The bar is fashioned as an apothecary's dispensary. Staff wear rustic cotton jackets and neckerchiefs. Any minute now, surely, they will burst into a well-loved tune from Oliver!

A trip to the basement games room (3D TV, Wii, table tennis) reveals a glimpse of 16th-century priory wall. Then up, up, to my room at the top. You can open the windows – always good. Love the bedhead – from gaudy fairground reclamation. A marble-trimmed bath sits in a gold mosaic'd niche and there's a purple-tinted Buddha's head in the fireplace. A blue and red abstract on the chimney breast is signed Richard Hamnet Expo 67. Shower, loo and hanging space are shoehorned into a brick red en suite, and I have everything I need, including teeny tubes of REN eye and cleansing gels.

Wi-Fi is free (hurrah!), and I can order grub here or downstairs from Bruno Loubet's kitchen. The minibar is a veritable curiosity shoppe of brown-bottled bitters and pre-mixed cocktails, but I'm off out to a drinks party. When I return, the lounge is heaving with a private pre-opening event (the London Cocktail Society, what else?). I flop upstairs and order small portions of comfort food. A mug of soup (butternut squash with maple croutons) and a little bowl of risotto.

Gosh is it that time already? Wish I could buy more time in bed this wonderful morning. It only happens once every few years, but when I come across A Real Hotel for Girls, it makes the schlep utterly worthwhile.

• Breakfast (a beautiful buffet) £13.50. Brunch menu at weekends
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