The Locarno Suite consists of three rooms originally designed by Scott for diplomatic dinners, conferences and receptions. The largest room, looking out on to the Main Quadrangle, was originally designated the Cabinet Room, but seems never to have been used as such in the nineteenth century. The adjacent Dining Room was also used for meetings but is best remembered as the room used by Lord Salisbury in preference to the Secretary of State’s room. Beyond is the Conference Room with its gilded ceiling supported by metal beams covered by majolica decorations.

During the First World War an acute shortage of space within the Foreign Office led to the occupation of the Suite by the Contraband Department. This was not a success. The original decoration by Clayton and Bell had become very shabby, and the rooms were too dark and draughty for daily use. It was impossible to clean the original stencilling, and the rooms needed redecoration.

Before any decision was made, the Locarno Treaties, designed to reduce strife and tension in Europe, were initialled at Locarno in Switzerland in October 1925. The delegates agreed to come to London for the formal signature of the Treaties and the only possible venue for the ceremony was Scott’s Reception Suite in the Foreign Office. The Reception and Dining Rooms were cleared of their occupants, and the walls adorned with royal portraits to hide the shabby decorations. The formal signing of the accords on 1 December 1925 was an impressive occasion, recorded, according to The Times, by journalists from half the world ‘wedged in tiers’ behind a barrier half-way down the room, and by ‘photographers and cinematographers…perched high up in nooks above the windows’.

Following Chamberlain’s instructions after the ceremony that the Suite should be redecorated, the Royal Fine Art Commission was asked to advise. A subcommittee headed by Sir Reginald Blomfield recommended that the original Victorian stencilling should be removed from the two largest rooms in favour of repainting in shades of parchment colour. The walls of the middle room were covered in crimson silk stretched on battens, and were hung with portraits of famous Foreign Secretaries. The three rooms were then renamed the ‘Locarno Suite’, as a memorial to a supposed diplomatic triumph promising an era of international cooperation. Many conferences and diplomatic functions took place there until the outbreak of the Second World War.

Thereafter, however, the chandeliers were shrouded and the Locarno Suite became the home of the cyphering branch of Communications Department. Renewed lack of office space after 1945 led to the division of these rooms into cubicles under false ceilings, and in these makeshift plasterboard hutches, the Legal Advisers and others worked.

All this changed in the late 1980s, when the FCO’s rolling programme of restoration and refurbishment reached the area surrounding the Suite. The plasterboard shroud was stripped from the second largest room of the Suite to reveal once more the coffered ceiling, pilasters crowned with Corinthian capitals, and quadrants supporting gilded iron beams. Circular majolica plaques bearing the national arms or emblems of twenty countries further ornament these quadrants, and the original stencilled design has been reinstated on the walls. The Locarno Conference Room reverted to its original purpose in summer 1990, while the restoration of the Reception and Dining Rooms proceeded between 1990 and 1992.

In the Dining Room, the removal of the plasterboard and the very dirty red silk hangings uncovered the original stencilled decoration in olive and gold, with red and gold borders. Although faded and damaged, its survival ensured that an exact copy could be superimposed on the walls, restoring the room’s authentic Victorian splendour. Two new doors, matching exactly Scott’s originals, give direct access into the adjacent former India Office.

The restoration of the reception Room involved much painstaking detective work. The great barrel-vaulted ceiling of the Reception Room was known to have borne an elaborately detailed design of classical figures and signs of the zodiac, but it was feared that the decorators in the 1920s had removed from it with pumice stone every last scrap of colour and gilding. Close examination nevertheless revealed that one section had simply been painted over, and scientific analysis of the remains below enabled the ceiling to be reinstated according to Clayton and Bell’s original design. The marble fireplaces throughout the Suite, like those in the Secretary of State’s Room, date from the eighteenth century and were transferred from the old Foreign Office.

Following the restoration, the entire Locarno Suite is once more available for conferences and ministerial and government functions.