Florin Court — Whitehaven Mansions

Florin Court is an Art Deco residential building on Charterhouse Square in London that famously served as Hercule Poirot’s fictional residence in the TV series starring David Suchet. Built between 1935 and 1937 by architects Guy Morgan and Partners for £74,000, the Streamline Moderne structure stands over a 1348 Black Death plague pit where thousands were buried. Author William Makepeace Thackeray also lived on the site in 1824.

London · from the walk “Monks, Martyrs & Marxists” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Florin Court, 6-9 Charterhouse Square, London EC1M 6ET

Why was Florin Court chosen to play Hercule Poirot's apartment building in the television series?

Look up at this sleek, curving facade of pale brick and steel... and take a moment to appreciate the sheer audacity of it. This is Florin Court, and it has one of the most extraordinary split personalities of any building in London.......... Florin Court is an Art Deco, Streamline Moderne, Grade Two listed residential building on the eastern side of Charterhouse Square in Smithfield. It was built between nineteen thirty-five and nineteen thirty-seven for Charterhouse Limited, designed by architects Guy Morgan and Partners, with builders J. Gerrard and Sons. Guy Morgan had trained under the great Sir Edwin Lutyens himself. And the price tag? Just seventy-four thousand pounds... which would be about four point two million today.......... But here is what most people come to see. For many, Florin Court is most famous as the fictional address of Agatha Christie's beloved Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, in the long-running television series that aired from nineteen eighty-nine to twenty thirteen, starring David Suchet. In the documentary Being Poirot, Suchet revealed that Florin Court was chosen not because of its location, but because of its perfect Symmetry. That obsessive order, those clean geometric lines... just like the detective himself.......... The production team got incredibly lucky. Property developers had Just refurbished the building, restoring the exterior to its original pristine condition. The developers agreed to let them film almost before they had let any of the apartments at all!......... Now here is where the story takes a Dark turn. You are standing on a graveyard. This square was established near a thirteen forty-eight plague pit, which formed the Largest mass grave in London during the Black Death, where tens of thousands of bodies were buried. The Crossrail excavations here in March twenty thirteen uncovered twenty-five skeletons, with an estimated five thousand plague victims buried in West Smithfield alone. One skeleton belonged to a young man in his mid-twenties, struck down at the Height of the pandemic between thirteen forty-eight and thirteen forty-nine. Isotope analysis of his teeth revealed he had grown up in rural East Anglia before moving to London, where he met his sad fate.......... And there is one more hidden layer. In eighteen twenty-four, a Mrs. Boyes kept a lodging house at number nine Charterhouse Square... right where you are standing now. Among her boarders were young day boys from the nearby Charterhouse School, including a teenager named William Makepeace Thackeray... the future author of Vanity Fair. Thackeray disliked Charterhouse so much, he parodied it in his fiction as... Slaughterhouse.......... So think about that. Beneath your feet, medieval plague victims. Before your eyes, a nineteen thirties vision of modernity that became a fictional detective's home. And woven through it all, the ghost of one of England's greatest novelists. Charterhouse Square is not just a location... it is a palimpsest, where every layer tells a completely different story.

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