There are not many times when I wish I had stonking great pots of money, but the feeling washes over me when I visit a house such as High and Over in Buckinghamshire. Here is one of the great pioneering houses of the modern movement, a 1929 masterpiece by architect Amyas Connell. And it is up for sale.
By today’s standards, you don’t need to be super-rich to buy it — the asking price is £975,000, which is steep but not unknown at the top end of the market for a four-bedroom house outside Amersham, only 32 miles from central London.
What is on offer, though, may be big and beautifully restored by its current owners, but it is only just over half of this highly unusual Y-shaped country house, which was designed with three wings radiating from a central hexagonal hall. The house was divided into two homes in 1962. That was regrettable, although by the standards of the day it was quite well done, and it saved the house from what would otherwise have been certain demolition.
One house got the central ground-floor hall and the other — this one — got the main entrance and the hexagonal rooftop sitting room leading out onto two sheltered roof terraces. Both share two acres of gardens with the original circular swimming pool.
This house is the better option. It is slightly bigger, has the original approach and chromed-metal front doors, and the views from the roof are tremendous. But if I had it, I’d want the other half as well (it’s not for sale) and I’d put them back together again. Oh, and I’d also have to buy and demolish the 1960s houses built on some of the land, to restore the landscape. That’s why I’d need monster reserves of money.
Then you could live like the house’s original owner, Bernard Ashmole, the celebrated archaeologist and expert on Greek sculpture. Ashmole was then in his mid-thirties, had married money and was clearly determined to spend as much of it as possible on building a new home for his family.
Connell had recently arrived from his native New Zealand, his head spinning with the early modernist designs of Le Corbusier. He was 27 when he started work on High and Over. Architect and client shared a background in classical architecture — they had met at the British School in Rome. They made it their joint mission to create a modern version of a classic white Mediterranean home.
The result was a new direction in architecture and it made both men famous. When you look at original photos of the house standing proud and high on a bare hillside above the Misbourne Valley, you can understand why it was so controversial.
“It has come in for a good deal of hostile comment,” reported Country Life in 1931. “For the most part this is really directed against the novelty of the building, for people hate novelty. But it must be frankly admitted that the white house does not fit in with the traditional view of the English landscape.”
Ashmole fought a huge planning battle to get the house built and Country Life, despite its reservations, recognised its brilliance. “Here is architecture pure and unalloyed by sentiment, reminiscence or clap-trap,” wrote Christopher Hussey, the magazine’s editor.
Today, the hillside is no longer bare. Mature trees blanket the slopes and the house is hard to see until you are close. Some outbuildings, including a water tower and fives court, have gone. Despite this, it is still amazing.
Ashmole had selected his site carefully. Amersham was at the end of the Metropolitan line, so getting to his jobs at London University and the British Museum was easy. Being out west, it was also handy for his later work at Oxford University. Being on a hillside, it had all the light and air and views he craved, opening out to the south and west while turning its back to the cold northeast. A fitness freak, he dug the garden pool himself, making it circular so that he could swim long distances without pause. You get the picture. Here was a house built by two people with immense talent and energy. So what’s it like today? You approach the house up a lane that is at first flanked by smaller modernist “Sun Houses” built by Connell’s firm in the 1930s. These give way to newer houses, but enough of High and Over’s setting — in particular, the garden — is preserved. You drive up to the double front doors, and there you meet the current owners, Ian and Diana Halley. He’s in advertising, she’s in PR; both have a love of 1930s architecture and design . Over 10 years they have restored the house beautifully and filled it with their collection of art deco furniture. Oddly, this is more “modern” than the furniture Ashmole and Connell chose, which was either much more traditional or austerely plain.
Originally, you would have marched straight through to the central hall; now you go either right — to the kitchen and sitting room — or left, to the dining room, a bathroom and bedroom, and the stairs to the upper levels. These are the old back stairs, once bare concrete but now oak-faced. They take you past the two first-floor bedrooms to the top floor, which contains a fourth bedroom, a living room that opens into what was the hexagonal rooftop day nursery in the 1930s, and a study fitted into what was once the head of the main stairs, which now serve the other house.
This top level is spectacular. The open terraces to either side have sheltering roofs, still adorned with the hooks where Ashmole slung his hammock and his children their swing. Today, say the Halleys, it is just the place for barbecues.
“When we moved in, the place was completely suburbanised,” says Ian. “It had woodchip wallpaper everywhere. All the little details had been painted over. We took two years to strip it back.” They chose strong 1930s colours for the walls and recreated the dining room’s metallic-gold wall covering. Original glass- panelled light fittings are set into some ceilings.
“We never thought we’d move out of London,” says Diana. “Then this place came up and suddenly we were here.” Now, however, their two children are older and keen horseriders, so they want a house with a paddock, and High and Over can’t provide that. So the family are off to a farmhouse nearby, and somebody else can have the benefit of their labour.
One or two prospective purchasers, I gather, have also pondered reuniting the house. If it can be done, it would be no more than the house deserves. In the meantime, this half of High and Over is a portal back to the heroic period of modern architecture. It is a true original.
High and Over is on sale through Knight Frank, 01494 675 368, www.knightfrank.com
