Rising Sun — the function room

The function room

Two steps up off the bar side, a short landing, one door. Nobody walks through it on the way anywhere else, which is what makes it private rather than just separate.

It is one room. There is no second space to open up into if the numbers grow on the day, and that is worth saying plainly before anything else: the room is the size it is. What changes is the shape you put on the floor, and the shape decides how many it will take. A sit-down and a standing do are different rooms as far as the arithmetic is concerned.

The room as it stands

The door: One, off the landing, and it is the only way in and out for guests. Two steps between the bar side and the landing. If somebody in the party cannot manage steps, say so when you ring and we will tell you honestly what can and cannot be done about it.
The hatch: Cut through the seam wall into the back of the bar. Shut unless the booking asked for it open. With it open, drinks are poured on the bar side and handed straight through; with it shut, the room is sealed off and anyone wanting a drink walks round to the counter.
Tables and chairs: Stacked at the far end of the room when it is not in use, and put out before you arrive in whatever shape the booking book says. Trestles and rounds, not fixed seating, so the floor can be set as rows, as rounds, or cleared altogether.
Measurements: Written on the plan behind the bar. Ring and we will read them to you off it rather than have you work from a figure on a website that nobody has checked with a tape since it was typed.
Power and light: Sockets on two walls and the light on one switch by the door. Anything that needs more than that — a stage, a tower, anything bolted or hung — is a conversation before the booking is taken, not on the day.
The way out: Kept clear, which is the real reason the planner takes an allowance off the floor before it works out numbers. The route out is not furniture space and never gets counted as any.

To put a number on a shape before you ring, the layout planner on the front page does the same sum we do: floor area, the allowance kept clear, then a figure per person for rows, rounds or standing, with every step printed.

What the house puts out

The room swept, the chairs counted and the tables out in your shape before the hour you asked for.
Glass from behind the bar, taken back and washed after. Nobody brings their own.
One of us on the bar side the whole time the room is out, so there is always somebody to ask.
The hatch open or shut as the booking says, and the light and the sockets working, checked that afternoon.
The room put straight afterwards. Tables back on the stack the same night.

What the house will not do

Put decorations up. Bring them and put them up yourselves; nothing goes on the walls with a nail or a staple, and everything comes down the same night.
Supply a sound system, a screen or a projector. There is no rig in the room and we would rather be straight about that than improvise one.
Let the room to one party and the bar side to another at the same time if the two are plainly going to be in each other's way.
Promise hours outside the hours written in the book. Anything that needs the house open later than usual has to be asked for well in advance, because it is not ours to grant on the night.
Hold the room on a maybe. Until it is in the book with a name and a number, the room is free for whoever rings next.

None of that is meant to sound discouraging. It is the list we would say over the bar anyway, and it is shorter to read here than to be disappointed by later. What happens next is on taking a booking: what goes in the book, what gets confirmed, and how a change is handled.