The Homewood

Magazine Antiques, June, 2005 by Sophie Chessum

In March 2004 the National Trust opened the doors of a new kind of English country house. The Homewood is a modernist house in Esher, Surrey, designed by the architect Patrick Gwynne (Pl. IV) and completed in 1938. World War II, followed by postwar building restrictions and a lack of enthusiasm in Britain for this new movement in architecture meant few architects experimented with the style. The Homewood is therefore a rare example of British, prewar international style and rarer because of the continuity of its ownership. The house, with its collection intact, and its eight-acre garden were given to the National Trust in 1999 by its architect and owner. Gwynne is not as well known as many of his contemporaries because he specialized in designing "private houses of a fairly luxurious standard designed for individual clients." (1)

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In more than sixty years of living at the Homewood, Gwynne made some alterations to the layout and fabric of the house as his needs changed and as new products or techniques were developed that he thought would improve on his original. The same is true of the interiors and furnishings, which he renewed and replaced from time to time. The house is not therefore a perfectly preserved example of 1938 living, but documents the evolution of a committed modernist's taste and his relationship to his first major project. After its acquisition, the National Trust undertook sensitive repairs to the services and roof with the advice of conservation architects specializing in modern movement buildings. (2) In the course of the project, some interiors were redecorated to Gwynne's specifications, a liberty seldom permitted by the National Trust. These conformed to the donor's modernist approach to the house and its use.

The Gwynne family had lived at the first Homewood, (3) an uninspiring Victorian villa in the Surrey suburbs, since 1914. Patrick Gwynne recalled that over time his father, Commander Alban Gwynne, and mother, Ruby, found the old house inconvenient and dogged by traffic noise. In 1936 these considerations, combined with the need for repairs, prompted the Gwynnes to demolish the house and entrust the building of a new one to their twenty-four-year-old son. Living at home and extolling the virtues of modernist architecture "from breakfast to dinner" (4) had won Patrick Gwynne his first private commission.

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The rhododendron maze was selected as the site for the new house, (5) away from the road and on a rise of ground that afforded southerly views over Commander Gwynne's garden. The younger Gwynne designed a reinforced concrete "two-storey bungalow" (6) with second-floor living rooms and bedrooms balanced on pilotis (or pilings) floating above the garden and front door (Pls. I, V). The T-shaped plan consisted of two wings linked by Gwynne's "bridge," a light-filled hall with an imposing spiral staircase surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows (see Pl. VIII), mirrors, and a curved mural-covered wall. The use of the latest construction techniques in reinforced concrete (7) resulted in a delicate exterior with a light-filled open-plan interior. Although Gwynne was inspired by Shipwrights (1936), in Hadleigh, Essex, designed by his mentor, the Canadian Wells Coates (1895-1958), and by the Villa Savoye (1931) in Poissy, France, designed by Le Corbusier (1887-1965), he devised a particularly sophisticated and well-developed plan for such a young architect.

In his eighties Gwynne recalled that he was converted to high modernism when he and his mother happened upon High and Over (1928-1931), innovative flats designed by Amyas Douglas Connell (1902-1980) in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. Motoring trips to Europe during school holidays fueled his enthusiasm, as did architectural books and journals. For example, in 1934 he drove with a friend to Stuttgart to visit Weissenhof, the experimental group of suburban houses designed by Erich Mendelsohn (1887-1953), Walter Gropius (1883-1969), Le Corbusier, and others. After leaving school, Gwynne's ambition was to find a position with an exponent of modernism such as Mendelsohn, who had settled in Britain after fleeing Germany in 1933, but this was not to be. Instead, he spent his formative architectural training "plodding away on sub-Lutyens" (8) buildings in the practice of the London architect John Duke Coleridge (1879-1934), a former pupil of Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944). Things brightened for Gwynne when he moved to the office of Coates, a founding member and chairman of the seminal Modern Architectural Research Group (founded in 1933), just as Coates had completed work on the celebrated Lawn Road Flats (Iskodon Building; 1933-1934) in Hampstead. Gwynne reveled in the opportunity to work alongside Coates, with another assistant, Denys Lasdun (1914-2001), on buildings such as the seaside Embassy Court Flats (1934) in Brighton, and Shipwrights.

Having launched his architectural career with such aplomb, Gwynne enrolled in wartime service and returned to the Homewood after six years, facing, like many young postwar architects in Britain, the challenge of reestablishing himself. In 1949, after a number of small commercial interior projects. Gwynne was commissioned to design a private house for the designer-turned-property-developer Leslie Bilsby (c. 1910-1990), (9) whom Gwynne had met while working for Coates in the 1930s and who had provided many of the furnishings and decorations for the Homewood. A turning point in Gwynne's public commissions came two years later when Hugh Maxwell Casson (1910-1999) commissioned him to design the Crescent Restaurant for the 1951 Festival of Britain, which commemorated the centennial of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and was a celebration of British culture. The government-funded exhibition was designed to revive Britain's morale after years of war and postwar austerity. Set up on London's South Bank, it included the permanent Royal Festival Hall and many temporary buildings like Gwynne's restaurant. For Gwynne the commission led to a long relationship with the restaurateur Charles, Lord Forte (1908-). (10) The size of Gwynne's practice fluctuated over the years, but he never employed more than two or three assistants. He preferred a close relationship with his clients, which they clearly valued, as he gained much work by personal recommendation, and clients often returned.