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

- Penny Churchill

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’.