Florin Court

Florin Court is an Art Deco residential building on the eastern side of Charterhouse Square in Smithfield, London.The building has been used as Whitehaven Mansions, the fictional London residence of Agatha Christie's character Hercule Poirot, in the LWT television series Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989–2013). As well as exterior filming, a number of interior shots of the building were utilised for this programme over the 24 years of production.HistoryBuilt in 1936 by Guy Morgan and Partners who worked until 1927 for Edwin Lutyens, it features an impressive curved façade with projecting wings, a roof garden, setbacks on the ninth floor and a basement swimming pool. It was probably the earliest of the residential apartment blocks in the wider Clerkenwell district, immediately north of the City of London. The walls were built in beige brick, specially made by Williamson Cliff Ltd (based in Stamford, Lincolnshire), and placed over a steel frame.Regalian properties refurbished the building in the late 1980s, to designs by Hildebrand & Clicker architects, providing today's interior layout and more facilities.Before the refurbishment the ground floor included a porter's office and flat for the head porter; the entrance hall had a marble floor inset with the arms of Charterhouse (now carpeted) and an inlaid ceiling covered the outside of the entrance door, before being plastered. In the basement there were a public restaurant, a cocktail bar and a clubroom. Behind the block a single-storey building contained two squash courts (modified in 2015 into a two floors office space renamed "Florin Court Studios").