I turn off the Portsmouth Road onto a long, winding driveway through wooded gardens. Between the trees, something glimmers in the distance. Gradually it comes into view. A country house, yes, and one owned by the National Trust at that. But there, any resemblance to normality vanishes. I am calling at The Homewood. It is a Grade II-listed modernist masterpiece. And the trust is looking for tenants to live in it.

The Homewood is the built dream of a young man in the 1930s. Its architect, Patrick Gwynne, persuaded his parents to part with £10,000 — an enormous sum of money at the time — to replace the old Victorian mansion the family owned on a 10-acre estate near Esher in Surrey. Enthused by the modernist design revolution then sweeping Europe, Gwynne, then 24, knew exactly the kind of family house he wanted: white, rectilinear, flat-roofed, visually hovering in its Arcadian setting, but sybaritic rather than austere. To ake a virtual tour of The Homewood click here.

At its heart is an enormous living room with a sprung maple dance floor, an end wall in veined polished marble, fold-out bar, built-in music system, and giant windows overlooking the gardens. Gwynne’s parents indulged him, although his father, a naval commander, ruefully described the project as “the temple of costly experience”.

It was finished in 1938. The Gwynne family lived there together for just one year before the war came and military service split them up. Gwynne’s parents both died in 1942, his sister married and moved away, so when peace came and Gwynne was demobbed from the RAF, the huge, then five-bedroom house, with its servants’ wing and garage for four cars, was soon his alone.

There he lived, ran his successful architectural business and held some famous parties for nearly 60 years, updating his house as time went on (he cut the bedrooms to four in the 1950s). He donated it to the National Trust in 1992, helped to restore it during the next decade, and left copious notes as to how the house and garden should be maintained. He died in 2003, aged 90 and still designing.

I drive in beneath the raised bedroom wing, just as Gwynne used to in his Aston Martin Vantage. That way, you get to the entrance in the dry. I hop out and ring the bell in a front door framed by a wall of translucent glass bricks. Steve Walker, the trust’s area manager, greets me, along with the house’s curator, Caroline Cliffe. Not many houses come with a curator attached, but then not many have a landlord like Walker, either. What sort of person are you hoping to get as a tenant, I inquire? He fixes me with a friendly eye and says: “Someone very like you, actually.”

I’d love to be able to afford this kind of lifestyle, but I think I’d need servants. Annual rents for big family homes in this part of Surrey command up to £60,000 a year. Though, as Walker admits, this is no normal house, and it comes with a list of duties. The tenants will have to look after the property, maintain the garden (about three days’ work a week), and open it to the public (by appointment). The house’s furniture is intrinsic, and you have to live with it. You can’t bring much of your own and it must be vetted by the trust. You must also be prepared for a house that can be cold and draughty in winter, and sometimes, with those huge windows, uncomfortably hot in summer.

To enter Gwynne’s temple, which has been restored by the trust at a cost of about £1m, you must remove your shoes and pad up the spiral terrazzo staircase. You arrive on a glazed bridge between the living and sleeping halves. For its time, it was astonishingly advanced; not only were the Gwynnes car buffs and socialites, they also liked more bathrooms and lavatories than most houses, even of this size, had at the time (there are five). At his sister’s request, Gwynne even designed a special “powder room” just off the top of the stairs so her girlfriends could touch up their make-up without having to pile into her bedroom.

But it’s the huge living room, and the dining room beyond, that sells the house. It is masterly. Structurally, it might be little more than a box on stilts, but what a box. Each of the three giant floor-to-ceiling windows is divided into seven panes, and you discover that the central panel of each slides up smoothly, a modernist sash window. If you know your architecture you can spot the references to design heroes of the time such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, and Gwynne’s own boss for a while, Wells Coates.

On the terrace is an ogee-shaped pool designed by Denys Lasdun, architect of the National Theatre and a friend from the early days. But for all his influences, Gwynne produced a remarkably mature design for one so young, thinking up all the built-in furniture and light fittings.

Lasdun described The Homewood as the great love of Gwynne’s life. “Patrick was very keen that the place should be inhabited by people who understand it,” says Walker. “He hoped that people who appreciated the architecture would come and use it. But we’re aware that finding the right tenants won’t be easy.”

Anticipating a lot of interest, the trust is asking people to show they mean business by forking out £10 for an information pack on the house before they apply. In line with Gwynne’s wishes, the property is to be let as a family home, though “family” doesn’t necessarily include children, who can be a bit too messy for historic interiors (though Walker is not ruling them out). It looks like the ideal home for a design-aware couple, particularly if, like Gwynne, they are excellent cooks and love entertaining.

So what’s the deal? How much will the incoming tenants have to pay, given the caretaking role they will have, and the high costs of running the place? It’s likely that some candidates will want to employ staff for the hands-on work.

Walker won’t reveal a figure. “It’s risky to be too precise about the full rental value of a house like this in Esher,” he says, though he expects that it will be “somewhat less” than the £60,000 local market value, because it’s not an all mod-cons house, because you’ll be in the public gaze, and it involves a fair bit of work.

Money’s not all-important, anyway. “We’re more interested in getting the right tenant than the highest bid,” he says. “We view this as a partnership between the trust and the tenant with the common aim of looking after, living in, and showing The Homewood to the public as envisaged by Gwynne.”

All I can say is that this is a most beautiful house and landscape. Gwynne was such a perfectionist that whoever lives here will have to be, too. Me, I’m just too prone to clutter and mess. But if you have the wherewithal, it just might be you.

- People interested in renting The Homewood should call the National Trust on 01372 455 024 by March 31

To ake a virtual tour of The Homewood click here.

Explore Property

• Buying & Selling

• New Homes

• Overseas

• Interiors

• Investment

• Gardens

• Cool In Your Code

• Specials

Times recommends

• Analysis: frustration for everyone - except investors
• Spanish property: why it's crunch time on the Costa del Sol
• Buy-to-let: professional investors cash in on the credit crunch