16-05-2025
Charles Dickens's £19m mansion at centre of court battle
A £19 million Regent's Park mansion that was once home to Charles Dickens is at the centre of a bitter court battle.
A former estate agent who specialised in luxury properties is being sued for not paying her mortgage on the Grade 1-listed property.
It was at the Hanover Terrace mansion that Dickens lived in 1861, when he was writing Great Expectations, his epic tale of a blacksmith's apprentice who enters high society after receiving an unexpected fortune.
But for Deborah Fiorentino the house has brought her less than good luck.
After taking out a £17.9 million loan against the mansion, a separate mews house and a third property in Hampstead, Ms Fiorentino proceeded to run up massive arrears, a court heard.
The 63-year-old former wife of Italian aristocrat Giovanni Fiorentino and celebrity British divorce lawyer Raymond 'Jaws' Tooth, has now been accused by her lender of owing it more than £10 million.
The Luxembourg-based private bank Banque Havilland is suing her to gain possession of the house, claiming that despite being 'supposedly a high net worth individual,' she is simply unable to cover the cost of the mortgage.
Ms Fiorentino is fighting the claim on the basis that she has been treated 'unreasonably' by the lender, which she says prevented her from refinancing, costing her millions.
The seven-bed house in Hanover Terrace, overlooking Regent's Park boating lake, is where Dickens spent the summer of 1861.
Designed by Buckingham Palace and Marble Arch neo-classical architect John Nash, it has been recently renovated to feature its own gym and sauna.
Ms Fiorentino, a former estate agent who built up a portfolio of luxury houses in some of London's most expensive districts, took out the five-year loan with the bank in March 2019, secured against the Hanover Terrace house and mews, and the third property in Frognal.
But the court heard that from early 2023 she failed to meet her interest payments.
Representing Banque Havilland at Mayor's and City County Court this week, Michael Walsh KC said Ms Fiorentino had shown herself unable to pay her debts.
'The irresistible conclusion here is that she is persistently unable to meet her obligations,' he told Judge Nicholas Parfitt. 'She has made no interest payment whatsoever since December 2022 on this loan.
'The reality is that she has had ample time to repay the amounts owed by her and cannot do so.'
Mr Walsh said the bank had done what it could to help Ms Fiorentino, delaying interest payments and also its court case after she first defaulted.
Attempts to sell the house
The court heard that Ms Fiorentino had claimed several times to be close to selling the house, including once to an unnamed Premier League footballer, but a sale had not gone through.
Accusing her of being 'incapable of properly marketing this property,' Mr Walsh said she had initially marketed the Frognal house for a 'wildly over-optimistic' £19.95 million, before selling it for just over £11 million.
The proceeds of that were used to pay off some of the £17.9 million loan, leaving her still owing over £10.2 million, said the barrister.
'Ms Fiorentino has also made no meaningful progress in either selling Hanover or refinancing the outstanding loan,' he continued. 'The history of this matter is littered with promises that she is close to securing finance, but it is obvious that she cannot do so.
'This is not through any fault of Banque Havilland. The truth is that Ms Fiorentino cannot sell Hanover because it is overpriced, just as Frognal was overpriced but sold when it was marketed properly.'
Ms Fiorentino's barrister, Thomas Rothwell, said the house, which 'has always been occupied as her home,' should not be taken away by the bank.
He said she should be granted a 'time order', giving her a few extra months to secure finance or sell the house and pay what she owes and claimed that she had been 'treated unreasonably'.
Mr Rothwell said the amount owed by Ms Fiorentino should be reduced by at least £2.45 million.
Ms Fiorentino married Giovanni Fiorentino in the early 1990s, going on to have two children with him and living between his two large family homes in Naples.
In 2008, she separated from her second husband, Raymond 'Jaws' Tooth, whose celebrity clients have included Roman Abramovich's former wife Irina, Sadie Frost, Cheryl Barrymore and Colin Montgomerie's former wife Eimear.
One of the homes Ms Fiorentino went on to buy in Hampstead belonged to pioneer plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, while her former home in nearby Frognal was where stars including Peter Sellers and Elizabeth Taylor enjoyed garden parties in the 1960s.
Judge Parfitt reserved his decision on the bank's possession claim until a later date.
