One cool, grey morning last December, a typewritten notice appeared on a wrought-iron railing near Hyde Park Corner: “In autumn 2026, a new members’ club will open at the historic 6-7 Grosvenor Place,” read the clipped missive. “We anticipate sharing more details upon the official project launch.” Before long, there were amused reports that a butter sommelier would be wheeling a silver trolley through its halls; whispers that more than £100 million had been spent on the 50,000-square-foot project; and an irresistible rumour that its cellars were being stocked with so much Burgundy that it had caused shortages elsewhere in clubland.

All of which, surreally, has proved true. To wit: London’s first über private-members’ club has landed, opening in a French Renaissance-style mansion among the embassy flags and stucco façades of Belgravia this September, complete with a velvet-draped nightclub overlooking Buckingham Palace and a greasy spoon overseen by the former head chef of Shoreditch’s One Club Row. Christened The Pembroke after a nearby mews, it’s been conceived as a modernised version of a St James’s club, but with a more “turbo-charged, tongue-in-cheek” atmosphere, says club director Will Woodhams. Take The Library Bar, where members can browse Tolstoy novels while chasing Wotsits with BuzzBallz, or the Alice in Wonderland-themed games room, lit by a handblown playing-card chandelier.

The club has been expressly designed with Londoners in mind, including part-time residents; Maria Sharapova and Claudia Schiffer hosted a pre-opening Wimbledon party there in July. Still, its founding members are largely power-brokers and tastemakers based in the city, from Emma Banks, the CAA veteran who orchestrated Charli xcx’s tour, to Max Hurd, the Burberry model turned art director known for his maximalism.

One suspects the latter would approve of design studio 1508 London’s tactile flourishes throughout the club, including Aubusson tapestry-inspired wallpaper by Pierre Frey and hand-carved Douglas-fir panelling, but it’s Grosvenor Place’s heritage that’s most significantly shaped The Pembroke’s interiors, with historical references dotted throughout its seven storeys. Built in the 1860s, it served as the home of Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman before ladies-only club The Forum took over, with tea dances and bridge for members such as Emmeline Pankhurst in the 1920s. Portraits of Campbell-Bannerman, Pankhurst and an eccentric convention of other Eminent Belgravians line The Pembroke’s central staircase – Vivien Leigh and Mozart, Margaret Thatcher and King Zog – while the rooms have been filled with more than 500 artworks curated by Jolyon Fenwick, a dealer who has sourced canvases for everyone from Queen Elizabeth II to the Obamas. “It’s deliberately eclectic in that quintessentially British way,” he says of  The Pembroke’s collection, which ranges from ’70s C-type prints of Vivienne Westwood to wallpaper from Damien Hirst’s now-shuttered restaurant Pharmacy. “It’s all been chosen to arrest you, to make you lean in for a closer look.”

More than 500 works of art line The Pembroke’s walls, from Grayson Perry ceramics to Robert Rauschenberg lithographs; the granite-columned entrance stands just moments from Hyde Park Corner.

In a departure from many St James’s clubs, The Pembroke does actually feature dedicated spaces for working on – whisper it – laptops, including a 25-foot-long dark-wood table purchased from a Bavarian castle, but epicurean pleasures are the real focus here. (Martinis are listed as an interest on the members’ application, with The Pembroke’s signature version served at -21 degrees, a nod to the coldest temperature dubiously recorded in London during the frigid winter of 1795, although the more temperate will be well-served too; even the water options range from Richard Brendon carafes of London tap to bottles of naturally sparkling Châteldon, Louis XIV’s favourite.)

Besides Rollo’s, the aforementioned greasy spoon, dining options include the fusion restaurant Kōri – a little bit ’90s Hakkasan, a little bit noughties Nobu, with a hidden oyster bar behind its aquarium-patterned walls – as well as The Dining Room, where the menu is classic-leaning-kitschy: think Pringles topped with caviar, surf and turf platters, and Black Forest gateau.

As for nightlife at The Pembroke: its epicentre will be Emie’s, a fourth-floor club named after Pankhurst, and the fifth-floor Monty’s, whose illuminated onyx bar will serve British-inflected cocktails, such as barley-water margaritas, with Buckingham Palace’s tennis court visible through the plane trees below. Each storey of The Pembroke has not just its own visual identity but a sonic one too (Sidney Bechet-inspired jazz, Congolese Rumba), with the DJs behind its solid-marble L-Acoustic booth set to “fill the gap Chiltern Firehouse left behind”, says the club’s music booker, Claudia Leslie, whose other clients include Zoë Kravitz-approved Chez Margaux in New York. “Dancing,” Woodhams adds, “will last until 3am.”

As for whether that influenced King Charles III’s decision to remain at Clarence House? I wouldn’t hazard to guess.