Anatomy of a House No.1- High and Over, Amersham

Anatomy of a House is our new regular series exploring the design, history and architects of some of our favourite modernist houses. As well as featuring the most famous and influential houses of the Greater London region, we will also be giving centre stage to lesser known houses by famous architects and obscure houses by obscure architects. We start with one of the most prominent modernist houses in Metro-Land, High and Over in Amersham by Amyas Connell. 

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High and Over, Amersham, Buckinghamshire
1929-31
Amyas Connell

One of the most famous modernist houses in Metro-Land, and indeed the country, High and Over was a forerunner for the new style houses built through the 1930s. Other houses have a claim to be the first modernist dwellings in Britain, such as Peter Behrens New Ways in Northampton (1925) or the Silver End Houses in Essex (1926), but High and Over was the house that brought modernist domestic design to the public's attention. 

The house was commissioned by Professor Bernard Ashmole, who was at the time the director of the British School at Rome, later of the British Museum. Ashmole and his wife Dorothy moved back to Britain in 1928 and wanted a home in the countryside within commutable distance of London. Ashmole had met architect Amyas Connell at the school in Rome and asked him to design a house to be situated on 12 acres of land on a hilly site outside Amersham, a stop on the Metropolitan Railway. 

Amyas Connell was born in Eltham, New Zealand in 1901, and after training with an architect in Wellington before travelling to Rome to attend the Rome School. Connell cut short his stay in Rome to design High and Over, with the planning application submitted in May 1929. The application was approved with the council saying they were doing so “with the greatest reluctance”. The council did not like the start modernist design but couldn't find a legal reason to turn it down (this was obviously before “in keeping” became a valid reason). 

Connell had originally planned for the building to be entirely constructed of concrete. However the expertise of buildings firms in Britain at this time was somewhat limited when it came to using concrete for smaller domestic projects. Instead the house was constructed by Messers Watson of Ascot, using a concrete frame with brick and block infill, with a bright white rendered finish. 

Despite its stark geometry and white walls, Connell’s design for High and Over took many cues from historical styles of architecture. The Y shaped plan of the house, with its three wings allowed the Asmoles an almost 360 degree view over the countryside, as well as providing maximum sunlight into the house. Similar plans designed to catch sunlight throughout the day had been used by Arts & Crafts architects like E.S. Prior and Hermann Muthesius. The three wings of the house connect to a hexagonal centre, a design that had also been previously used by Arts & Crafts designers. 

Inside the house, the crisp white of the exterior was replaced with a more colourful, art deco-style palette. A fountain was the centrepiece of the house, with further decoration in coloured glass, steel and chrome strips. The concrete construction was hidden by suspended ceilings and a pale grey finish to the walls. You can see the original interior of the house in a short film by Pathe “The House of a Dream” . Of course the house was later featured in the televison film "Metro-land" by John Betjeman and Edward Mirzoeff, with Betjeman memorably declaring about High and Over "I am the home of a twentieth-century family, it proclaimed, ‘that loves air and sunlight and open country"
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The house was part of a larger plan incorporating landscaped gardens with a swimming pool, a gardeners lodge, an electrical transformer and a water tower. The house was given centre stage in the gardens with a winding path leading up the sloping gardens, with various viewing points along the way to admire the countryside in one direction, or High and Over in the other. This integrated landscape and view has now been altered, with parts of the estate sold off over the years for the mid 60s housing estate which now surrounds the house. Also around the house are the four “Sun Houses” designed by Basil Ward, Connell’s partner from 1930 (they would be joined by Colin Lucas in 1934. 

The house was listed in 1971, and is currently Grade II*. The house was subdivided into two homes, with the marvellous central hallway divided in two. Happily, the two halves have been reunited with the ground floor restored to its original floor plan and colour scheme. It may be over 90 years old but it still stands today as “The House of a Dream”.

References

Connell, Ward & Lucas: Modern Movement architects in England 1929-39: Dennis Sharp and Sally Rendel

A Guide to Modernism in Metro-Land: Joshua Abbott
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Dennis Sharp Archive at Paul Mellon Centre


Images from RIBApix/Amersham Museum/Paul Mellon/Britain from Above