Whitehall Court

WESTMINISTER, W1

Formerly part of the official Whitehall headquarters and pied-a-terre of Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the unique 4,144 sqft, three-bedroom penthouse in Whitehall Court is located over the top three floors of this famous former government property.

As befitting a former lair of MI6, this most secret of penthouses is located over the top three floors (8th to 10th) of the building with one of Whitehall Court’s landmark cupolas (11th and 12th levels) providing unique living spaces at the top of the penthouse.

The grand Portland stone building is located in the heart of the Government’s Whitehall quarter, adjacent to the Defence Ministry and was constructed in 18841887 by Jabez Balfour. Designed by Thomas Archer and A. Green, the building provides a combination of luxury apartments and flats used as offices or meeting places. Residents have included William Gladstone, Lord Kitchener and George Bernard Shaw.

In 1911 the top floors and eaves of the building became the London headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS): MI6, founded in October 1909 by Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, a 50 year old Royal Navy officer. Originally MI6 was based in Ashley Mansions in Vauxhall Bridge Road, but by 1911 the growing service needed more space prompting them to relocate to Whitehall Court, an ideal location next to the War Office, Admiralty and Foreign Office.

BLUE PLAQUE WHITEHALL COURT PENTHOUSE WAS ONCE THE LONDON HOME OF MI6 & SIR MANSFIELD SMITH-CUMMING, JAMES BOND’S BOSS “M”

Giles Milton in his book Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin’s Global Plot writes: “To preserve his anonymity, SmithCumming first took a private flat in Ashley Mansions on Vauxhall Bridge Road and moved his SIS operations into this unassuming new headquarters. He would move again into the eaves of an Edwardian mansion building, Whitehall Court. This {flat} was a labyrinthine collection of offices close to the centre of government. Potential agents were led up six flights of stairs before entering a warren of corridors, passageways and mezzanines {in the eaves of the building}.”

The penthouse base was kept top secret, in his SIS memos (November 1909 and March 1910) Smith-Cummings wrote: “Been here five weeks. Absolutely cut off {in the eaves} from everyone while here and cannot give my address out or be telephoned to under my own name. One of my colleagues asked me if I should object to his moving into a flat next door, but I told him that I thought it would interfere with my privacy {and secrecy} in my own flat and I told him not to go forward with any such scheme.”

As the official Secret Intelligence Service website explains, so secret was the new headquarters that it even had a bogus address with the Post Office – Messrs Rasen, Falcon Limited (MI6 posed as a shipping firm) – with anything sent to this address by MI6 operatives forwarded to Smith-Cumming at the penthouse apartment.

Intelligence reports produced in the penthouse

were called CX reports – the name still employed today, and secret memos were written/typed in green ink, a practice which continues to the modern day. Smith-Cummings would sign himself as either “C” or “M” in green ink. Ian Fleming (1908-1964) later used SmithCummings as the inspiration for James Bond’s boss, taking the code name “M” for the James Bond novels and movies.

During WW1, danger from German bombers and Zeppelins resulted in the eaves of the building being reinforced with a huge network of steel encased timber beams and hardened flooring, to ensure that a bomb hit would not disrupt MI6, this extraordinary security upgrade remains in the penthouse to this day with the beams providing a novel feature within the living spaces.

During WW1 MI6 spied on the Germans in Belgium, made attacks on the German fleet in harbour and spied on the Bolsheviks in Russia, with M16 identifying the Russian radicals as a ‘threat to British security’. The security services also used the pad as a base for creating gadgets including invisible ink, pens containing poison and bombs disguised as rats. In December 1919 MI6 left Whitehall Court and moved its offices to a house on Melbury Road in Holland Park although Smith-Cummings continued to use Whitehall Court as his personal office and official residence up until 1922 when he was forced to leave due to ill health, dying in 1923 at the age of 64. In 1994 MI6 moved to its present headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, which has become world-famous from its appearances in several James Bond films. On 30th March 2015, a Blue Plaque was unveiled on the outside of Whitehall Court referring to Smith-Cummings use as a home and Secret Service office between 1911 and 1922.

In a fitting homage to the role of Whitehall Court in the founding of MI6 the building has a cameo role in the new 2021 James Bond movie No Time To Die with footage of Bond actor Daniel Craig parking the famous silver Aston Martin outside the building, and looking up at the façade, before walking over to the adjacent Defence Ministry.

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