Thoroughly modern mansions
In the 1930s, COUNTRY LIFE found one of these four Home Counties beauties ‘stimulating’ (although Betjeman wasn’t keen); another has water canons and ‘intelligent’ technology
NINETY years after it was built, one of Britain’s most controversial and iconic country houses, Grade Ii*-listed High and Over at Amersham, Buckinghamshire, has come back to the market through Savills (07824 592170) at a guide price of £2.5 million.
Its Historic England listing describes the striking Y-shaped property—built in 1929–31 and known locally as the ‘Aeroplane House’ for its three wings leading off a hexagonal reception hall—as being ‘of outstanding importance as the first truly convincing essay in the international style in England, one of only two buildings included in The International Style Exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1932’.
Back home, the reaction was less enthusiastic. Sir John Betjeman commented: ‘In 1931 all Buckinghamshire was scandalised by the appearance, high above Amersham, of a concrete house in the shape of a letter “Y”. It was built for a young professor, by a young architect… It started a style called moderne.’
The professor was Bernard Ashmole, of Classical Archaeology at London University, and the architect was Amyas Connell, who won the prestigious Rome Scholarship; he later became part of the pioneering architectural practice of Connell, Ward & Lucas. Although England wasn’t quite ready for ‘moderne’ and plans for the house were passed by the local authority only ‘with extreme reluctance’, COUNTRY LIFE (September 19, 1931) took the opposing stance, hailing High and Over as ‘sound and stimulating architecture, a brilliant synthesis of contemporary thought with contemporary materials’.
The article continues: ‘There is nothing in its clean level lines nor in its whiteness that does not harmonise with the rolling chalk uplands. It does, in fact, conform carefully to the contours of the site. It makes no pretence to having grown out of the soil but says frankly “I am the home of a 20th-century family that loves air and sunlight and open country”.’
Connell planned a formal garden for the estate. Instead, in 1993, the lower part of the 12-acre site was sold and a series of smaller, but similar ‘Sun Houses’ were built to the design of Basil Ward, Connell’s partner and brotherin-law. The main house was later sold by the Ashmole family. After the Second World War, buildings designed by the pioneers of Modern architecture were no longer fashionable and few could afford to live in the grand manner. In the 1960s, High and Over was saved from demolition by being divided into two separate houses, but was reinstated as one dwelling in the 1990s. The current owners have restored many of the original features.
In all, High and Over offers 5,000sq ft of accommodation on three floors, including
six reception rooms, eight bedrooms and two bath/shower rooms; a 1,000sq ft roof terrace commands far-reaching views over Old Amersham to the Misbourne Valley. The property retains some 1.7 acres of its original grounds, with terraces and steps leading down to the circular swimming pool, lawns and a lightly wooded backdrop.
The use of the landmark building as a film set for period dramas such as the ‘Poirot’ series provides a useful income from time to time. Another bonus is the planning consent granted in April 2018 for the replacement of the garage by a single-storey annexe, ideal as
I am the home of a 20th-century family that loves sunlight and open country
a home office or studio. Families looking for ‘air, sunlight and open country’ allied to the grace and space of early-20th-century architecture, can find it all in favoured corners of the Home Counties.
A guide price of £8.95m is quoted by Savills and local agents Statons (01707 661144) for imposing Carbone House on the edge of Northaw Wood, near Cuffley, ‘one of the finest modern country houses in Hertfordshire and certainly one of the most impressive homes in Cuffley, yet only 20 miles from central London’.
Originally built in 1901, the impressive Edwardian country house—in three acres of manicured grounds that include a children’s playground, floodlit tennis court and newly planted orchard—has been transformed by the latest in touch-screen technology into the perfect ‘intelligent’ family home. The main house offers 9,260sq ft of living space, with a further 2,038sq ft in the adjoining threebedroom annexe. Linked to the main house is a residential leisure complex, comprising a gym, steam room, beauty-treatment room, kitchen, lounge area and an indoor pool with a water wall, central volcano and water guns.
Down in the garden of England, Edward Rook of Knight Frank (020–7861 5115) is asking £5.35m for secluded Quornden at Ide Hill, near Sevenoaks, a fine, Georgian-style house set in 34 acres of gardens, grounds, paddocks and woodland within the Kent Downs AONB. The much-cherished home of the Cantlay family since 1993, Quornden dates from the early 1900s and has been beautifully modernised with the addition, in 2012, of a tripleaspect orangery that provides a central core to the house. Quornden’s famous gardens, once open to the public, include a charming walled garden with an American-inspired ‘Jefferson’ serpentine wall.
The main house offers some 7,600sq ft of accommodation on three floors including three reception rooms, two studies, a vast kitchen/breakfast/family room, four bedroom suites, five further bedrooms and two bathrooms. It comes with a one-bedroom cottage, stabling, outbuildings, swimming pool, tennis court and an area of grassland running the length of the valley that serves as a golf practice area.
The indoor pool has a water wall, a central volcano and water guns