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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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

We are excited to announce our new book in collaboration with Philip Butler aka artdecomagpie, Tube Station Typologies 1924-61, an exploration of the golden age of tube station design, centring on Charles Holden’s work for the underground 

We are launching crowdfunding to help publish this project with a list of exciting rewards including postcards, prints and a specially curated tour. Follow the link to help bring the book to life HERE

During the War, the area was home to several Anti-aircraft batteries and an Air Defence HQ, and so was extensively bombed. This provided the basis for the extensive rebuilding of the area, something which had begun in the 1930s with the construction of the White City Estate by London County Council. The original plan was for an estate consisting of 2300 flats in 49 5-storey blocks, to house a population of 11,000. However the war halted construction, with a slimmed down plan completed in 1953 with a population of 8000. Design wise the estate is a typical London County Council 1930s design, and was somewhat anachronistic by the time it was completed, compared to the New Brutalist designs of estates like Alton West. The estate plan is partly influenced by Zeilenbau ideas, with blocks aligned along a north-south axis for maximum sunshine, with green spaces in between, and an east-west axis, Commonwealth Ave, with spaces for public buildings. The streets are named after countries featured in various exhibitions, such as Australia and Canada.

A little to the west is Phoenix Academy, built in 1958 as separate boys and girls schools, with shared facilities, Christopher Wren Boys' School and Hammersmith County Girls' School. The schools merged in 1982 and became Phoenix Academy in 2016. The school was built in brick and timber, which were used as other materials in short supply. It was the first job in charge for architect Edward Hollamby, who would go on to achieve great things as head of Lambeth Borough’s Architects Department and later the London Dockland Development Corporation. Hollamby was very much influenced by the Arts and Crafts architecture of the late 19th century, buying and restoring William Morris Red House in Bexleyheath. He used original Morris woodblocks to create a wallpaper pattern for the school, and comminsoned tapestry curtains designed by artist Gerald Holtom, featuring Morris, Rossetti and Burne-Jones. A new 6th form centre by Bond Bryan Architects, was opened in 2010.

A later addition to the area is the Wood Lane Estate, opposite the tube station, designed by John Darbourne and Geoffrey Darke. Planned from 1973, the estate was completed in 1978. It features 140 dwellings for 550 people, and consists of brown brick terraces, of two and four storeys. All homes have their own front door at pedestrian level, with pedestrian access and private spaces emphasised. Darbourne & Darke are most famous for their Lillington Gardens estate in Pimlico, and other estates in Islington, Richmond and Clapham.

From his arrival in 1931 until his premature retirement in the 1960s, Berthold Lubetkin helped introduce modernist design to Britain through a range of innovative buildings. His first buildings in the UK were those for London Zoo, the Gorilla House and the Penguin Pool, whose white walls and curving lines became an icon of the city. The Finsbury Health Centre was a success for its architectural design as well as its moral purpose, built as part of the “Finsbury Plan”, a borough wide policy to combat common problems such as lice, ricketts and diphtheria. His subsequent housing estates for Finsbury and other municipal boroughs brought to life his maxim “Nothing is too good for the ordinary people”. 

The building that brought him and his architectural practice Tecton to the attention of the world's architectural press, was Highpoint, an international modernist style apartment block on Highgate Hill for businessman Sigmund Gestetner in 1935. Gestetner’s original plan was for the block to house workers for his nearby factory (Tecton would design a factory for him in 1937, since demolished). However, in a reversal of the maxim mentioned earlier, Highpoint appears to have been too good for the ordinary people. ​

One of the most interesting and surprising details is the use of two caryatids as support pillars for the entrance porch. They were cast using moulds borrowed from the British Museum. Their use signaled a move away from the functionality of Highpoint I, towards a more playful approach, using classical and surrealist references. The use of the caryatids and the more varied materials shocked the young modernist orthodoxs, with Lubetkin seeming to throw away the ideals he had written in concrete next door only a couple of years earlier. ​

Colin Lucas was born in Greenwich in 1906, to Ralph Lucas and Mary Anderson Juler. Ralph was a trained engineer, but spent most of his time trying to invent valveless engines, whilst Mary was a modern composer. Colin went to Cambridge University and studied architecture under George Checkley, who would design two early modernist houses in Cambridge. After leaving Cambridge in 1928, he went to work for his fathers construction company, Lucas, Lloyd & Co, with Colin designing Noah’s House in Cookham for the family.

The house and boathouse on the River Thames was built in monolithic reinforced concrete, at a time when small-scale construction in concrete was rare. Most “Modern” houses were built in brick, then covered in white render to give the appearance of concrete construction. Unfortunately today, Noah’s House has been given a rustic makeover, complete with thatched roof! The boathouse however is intact and Grade II* listed.

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In 1934 Lucas joined the New Zealand architects Amyas Connell and Basil Ward in their partnership, becoming Connell, Ward & Lucas. Connell had come to prominence with his design for High & Over, a three storey Y-shaped house on Highover Hill in Amersham for Prof. Bernard Ashmole, one of the first modernist houses in the country. The firm mainly designed white walled modernist homes for the well to do, with each partner given solo responsibility for a job. 

Lucas is credited with designing 5 houses and a block of flats in his short time with Connell and Ward. The first house Lucas designed was The Dragons in Woodmancote, West Sussex in 1936. Once again it was a weekend house, this time for a Dr & Mrs Crow. The two storey house was designed to overlook the South Downs with its roof terrace and the living room window angled at 30 degrees to catch the views. The house has had additions and extensions added to it, which obscure Lucas’s original designs. The house is not listed. Another Lucas house which has suffered an ill fate is Greenside in Wentworth, Surrey. Built in  1937 for Sir Williamson Noble, surgeon to the Queen, who never actually lived there due to his wife’s hatred of the house! The house, originally called Bracken, features a prominent rectangular glazed staircase tower with an inbuilt garage and a large roof terrace. The house became something of a cause celebre, when in 2003, it was demolished by its owners to be replaced by something more in keeping with the genteel golf course next door.  

Happily other Lucas houses from his time with Connell and Ward are still extant and listed. 66 Frognal, Hampstead (1938) was built for solicitor Geoffrey Walford, and like other Connell, Ward & Lucas houses caused controversy, being called both “one of the greatest acts of vandalism ever perpetrated in London” and “..the best pre-war house in England”. There was also 26 Bessborough Road in Roehampton (1938) and Potcroft in West Sussex (1938). Whereas the house in Bessborough was a straightforward concrete International Style design, Potcroft had to be finished in timber due to the local planning authorities stipulations. Kent House in Ferdinand Street, Camden (1935) was the only block of flats completed by the practice, The design, led by Lucas, for the St Pancras House Improvement Society, consisted of two four storey blocks, with each apartment having 2 or 3 bedrooms, electric kitchens and balconies.

Georgie Wolton, architect and landscape designer, died last month on 25th August. Wolton was born in 1934, training at the Architectural Association and later working in the USA. Alongside her sister, Wendy Cheesman, she founded the Team 4 practice with Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Su Brumwell, despite being the only qualified architect, Wolton left after a few months. Wolton went into practice herself, designing only a handful of buildings over the next 25 years. The most famous of which is the live/work space. Cliff Road Studios in Camden (1968-71).

The houses that sprung up in the suburbs of London and beyond in the wake of the Case Study houses, would not be the first homes to use metal framing in the post war period. After the devastation of the Blitz and the subsequent rebuilding efforts, thousands of prefab homes were built around the outskirts of the capital. The British Iron and Steel Federation produced a steel framed house design that was erected from 1945 onwards. The house was designed by Frederick Gibberd, and featured a tubular steel frame clad in metal sheeting. Over 30,000 of these houses were built, and many can still be seen today, particularly in the suburbs around the North Circular road. Other houses featuring steel frames were built in immediate post war years, including a terrace in Romford (1949), designed by Denis Clarke Hall, better known for his school designs

John Winter had moved to the United States in the late 1950s, working for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and then Charles & Ray Eames, designers of perhaps the most famous Case Study House, No.8 in Pacific Palisades, California. Winter also took a road trip across the States visiting Mies Van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and the Case Study Homes, where he met Richard Neutra. On coming back to Britain his first steel framed house was in Wentworth for Graham and Diana Stewart-Ross in 1965. Assisted by John Mosse, a student of Winter at the time, the design used an external steel frame with timber cladding. The house was built with steel to allow quick construction, with the clients finishing the interiors themselves. ​

Winter's most famous steel house is one he built for himself in Highgate overlooking the cemetery, 81 Swains Lane. The house is not only steel framed but also clad in CorTen steel, designed to weather and cover itself in a rusty patina, which took around 7 years for Winters house from completion. Winter also designed a neighbouring steel house at no.85, with bright blue detailing. The house was demolished in 2008 to make way for a replacement by Eldridge Smerin. ​

Georgie Wolton is the least known member of Team 4, indeed she was only part of the practice for a few months, but she designed an early and remarkable steel house. The house was called Fieldhouse, located in Crocknorth Farm, Surrey and set in 60 acres of farmland inherited from her mother. Wolton designed the house for herself using glass walls and CorTen steel, slightly earlier than Winter. The house has now been dismantled and lies in storage, waiting to be rebuilt someday. ​

Richard Horden built nautically themed houses for his parents and later his sister. The first was Wildwood, aka Boat House, in Poole in 1972. It is constructed of a modular steel frame, and mirrored by a reflecting pool amid pine trees. The second house was Windrush aka Yacht House, in Hampshire. It is constructed using aluminium and steel components from an actual Tornado yacht. The house is perfectly square in plan, sitting on a concrete slab. The house was assembled on site by the owners in less than six hours. Horden had worked for Norman Foster at the start of his career before working for himself then later as Horden Cherry Lee. Horden passed away in 2018. ​

Back in the suburbs of London we find the twin houses of 2c & 2d Belsize Park Gardens in Camden, almost hidden between Georgian villas. They were designed by Robin Spence and Robin Webster for themselves, and feature 240 square meters of floor space, with a bedroom, kitchen, living area, another bedroom or office space and a courtyard garden. The engineering for the houses were taken care of by the Carter Clack Partnership, who were recommended for the job by Anthony Hunt when he couldn't do the job himself. ​

Many steel houses tend to take the same pavilion-like form. However a few houses break this stereotype. The most obvious is the extraordinary Eagle Rock in Coopers Green, East Sussex, designed by architect Ian Rirchie and built in 1982 for Ursula Colahan. The plan of the house takes the form of a bird with a central column and two wings rising either side. The ‘tail’ features a greenhouse, part of an environmentally minded approach, looking to minimize any additional heating and ventilation. The house is formed of tubular steel A-frames, with steel masts to support the ‘wing’ sections. In the central column are the kitchen, utility and work rooms. The wings contain the bedrooms and a small gallery. Ritchie had already designed a much simpler steel house in France in 1976 and prior to that had worked for Norman Foster. ​

Another example from Ealing is the Himalya Palace in Southall, designed by George Coles, the king of the cinema architects. Coles designed about 90 Cinemas, mostly for the Odeon chain, in a variety of styles. The Himalaya Palace, opened in 1928, is designed as a Chinese Pagoda with a red tiled roof and dragon gargoyles on the outside, and inside with chinese lanterns and decorative plasterwork in red and gold. Away from the Atmospheric style we have the Art Deco or moderne cinema. A great example of this is the Harrow Dominion cinema, designed by Fredrick Bromige and opened in 1936. The building features a magnificent art deco facade, unfortunately covered up since 1962, due to the cost of its upkeep. Plans are underway to uncover and restore the facade as part of a redevelopment into apartments. Bromige also designed the nearby Rayners Lane Grosvenor cinema, which has its streamline facade still uncovered. The frontage has a curving concrete mullion, said to be shaped after an elephant's trunk. Like many cinemas it has now been turned into a church. 

The next building type we are going to explore is the underground station. In 1915 Charles Holden met Frank Pick, then the commercial director of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, the forerunner of London Underground. Pick wanted to revolutionize design on the underground network, bringing in a new eye-catching modernist influenced look. Pick wanted the stations to communicate speed, modernity and light. The tube network already had a chief architect, Stanley Heaps, but Pick felt his designs were not modern enough.

Holden's first step in bringing modernism to the underground were his designs for eight stations at the southern end of the Northern Line, featuring double height ticket halls clad simply in Portland stone. Holden’s next step was the Piccadilly line stations of the early 30s. With designs such as Sudbury Town and Chiswick Park, Holden managed to balance form and function, allowing passengers to move quickly from the street to the platform or vice versa, using Scandinavian influenced buildings. Holden used basic plans for these stations, usually rectangular or circular. Holden wasn't a modernist ideologue, but recognized that these forms were the most efficient and harmonious for the function of the buildings.

Although Holden’s designs were simple in plan, this gave the buildings a recognizable silhouette, when lit up at night. Pick and Holden were impressed by the use of night time lighting on their trip to Europe and decided to implement a similar technique when designing the new Piccadilly line stations. However, Pick had other ideas. By 1934 Pick was CEO of the new London Passenger Transport Board, and wanted to expand the influence of the organization into all forms of travel in the capital. Two new stations were to be built on the Piccadilly Line, near the Great West Road, only 10 years old at that point.The stations, Boston Manor and Osterley, both differed to the design of previous stations in that Pick had pressured Holden to produce something more eye catching rather than being a function of their purpose. Pick wanted the stations to stand out alongside the new road, and attract commuters who might be tempted to travel by car or bus. 

The desire to attract attention can be seen in the design of the stations. Gone are the open ticket hall designs of Sudbury Town and Chiswick Park, replaced by low, squat buildings with tall, eye catching towers. These towers look rather like the towers on two buildings that Pick and Holden visited during a European tour in 1930, The Volharding Building in the Hague and De Telegraaf Building in Amsterdam.The Volharding building was specifically designed to allow as much advertising space as possible on the outside of the building. It was illuminated at night allowing for 24 hour adverts. The lighting of buildings in Europe impressed Pick and Holden on their 1930 trip, and they imported this idea when designing the Piccadilly Line stations of the 30s.

Wallis, Gilbert & Partners were the pre-eminent factory designers of the interwar years. Established by Thomas Wallis in 1916, the practice produced a wave of factories, becoming more extravagant in design as the 1920’s became the 1930’s. The building that brought them to the attention of the architectural and wider world was the Firestone Factory on the Great West Road in Brentford. 

Completed in 1928, the art deco office building which fronted on to the road, quickly became the symbol of Firestone in Britain. Behind this facade was the actual, more down to earth production buildings, which were nevertheless meticulously planned out for the most efficient use of space and time. The factory was famously demolished on August Bank Holiday weekend 1930, as the papers to save it, sat in an in-tray at the Department of the Environment.

Of course cinemas, tube stations and factories were not the only 1930s buildings to act as billboards for their services. Garages, showrooms and shops all tried to grab the attention of the passersby. Stuart Cameron Kirby designed a range of moderne car showrooms, such as this one in Staines. They were designed for Stewart and Arden, exclusive dealers for Morris cars in London. They set up their showrooms on the new roads into London, away from the traditional car showroom areas of Great Portland St and Piccadilly. The buildings had long plate glass windows, illuminated at night to show threat cars to passing motorists. ​

Banham’s 1966 book, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, brought together influences on Brutalism such as Le Corbusier and Owen Williams, and examples from around the world. The British examples included buildings by the Smithsons, Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall, Denys Lasdun, Owen Luder, Lyons, Israel & Ellis, John Voelcker and many others.