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.
