Florin Court at Charterhouse Square features an impressive curved façade with projecting wings, a roof garden, setbacks on the eighth and ninth floor and a basement swimming pool.
Constructed in 1936 by Guy Morgan and Partners, who had previously worked for Edwin Lutyens until 1927, the building at 6-9 Charterhouse Square in Clerkenwell was one of the earliest residential apartment blocks in the area. The walls were made of beige bricks that were specially manufactured by Williamson Cliff Ltd and placed over a steel frame.
Regalian Properties renovated the building in the late 1980s, under the guidance of Hildebrand & Clicker architects, to create the interior layout and additional facilities that exist today. Before the refurbishment, the ground floor included a porter’s office and a flat for the head porter. The entrance hall had a marble floor adorned with the Charterhouse arms (now covered with carpet), and an inlaid ceiling covered the exterior of the entrance door before being plastered. In the basement, there was a public restaurant, a cocktail bar, and a clubroom. A single-story building behind the block contained two squash courts, which were converted into a two-story office space called “Florin Court Studios” in 2015.
Prior to Florin Court’s construction, the three-story Georgian buildings on the same site housed a vicarage and a lady’s school until 1859, at which point they were converted into a staff dormitory for Copestake, Crampton & Co. Ltd, a Cheapside-based lace manufacturer and wholesaler that had purchased the property in 1872. The hostel accommodated up to 100 men and 18 women until the company began to move to Nottingham, at which point the building was sold in 1934 to help offset some of the business’s losses.
In 1989, Florin Court became famous as the fictional residence of Agatha Christie’s detective, Poirot, known as Whitehaven Mansions.
