4 JANUARY 1957, Page 27

SPLENDID EDWARDIAN

After Westminster Abbey, the Ritz—or at least Westminster's nearest approach to it. I crossed to see the interior redecoration done by the Methodists to their Central Hall, that splendid Edwardian building by Lanchester and Rickards which is at last coming back to its glory. Some dreary Government department had 'creamed it out' during the war and it was not improved by many prominent cardboard notices pointing to gents' and ladies' cloakrooms. Now it is itself again, white and grey in its noble staircase entrance hall, blue and white in the great domed hall itself, whose lightness is heightened by dark woodwork and red hangings. The only West- minster public building which now refuses to admit visitors is the attractive Middlesex Guild- hall in an ornamental late-Gothic style of 1906-13 by the little-known J. S. Gibson.